Thing #21: My thoughts

This has been a wonderful program to participate in and I am glad I was able to work through the majority of it during the school year.  This allowed me to practice and implement some ideas directly into my classes.  The podcasts in cooking, the copyright in yearbook, and the ideas for audiobooks in ELD.  I feel like it has provided me with more tools to help me be a successful and effective teacher.  Technology is an important part of our society and I think being able to incorporate it into the classroom is important for our student's learning.
As a teacher, this program has helped me achieve my goal to keep learning and moving forward as an educator.  There is so much out there to learn and as I teach, it is important to me that I keep learning and staying up to date on materials; whether specific to my content area or more general teaching strategies.  I plan to incorporate more technology tools and resources into my curriculum for next year.  This program has definitely helped me learn more about technology which will continue to benefit me and my students.

Thing #20: eBooks & Audios Books

I had a difficult time searching the "World Book Fair" site.  I was able to search for some general topics but it has posted that the next public access fair is from 7/4/10-8/4/10.  I think I will check back then to look through it in more depth since I don't think I was able to fully access the site.  It is such a great resource for audio books and I love the idea of using this in ELD.  I think it would help my students with reading, comprehension, and pronunciation.  Audiobooks are a great tool that allowthe students to read and follow along while they listen to the story being read.  This will be a great tool for my classroom.

Thing #19: Podcasts

If I am not at school or working on something for school, I am busy working on plans for my upcoming wedding this summer.  Since one or the other seem to always be on my mind, I decided to checkout some wedding planning podcasts and this is what I found.
I also like to use iTunes to find podcasts.  There is a video podcast that I use from startcooking.com (found via iTunes) that I use to show my students how to make omelets.  It is a great, short video and shows the step-by-step process.  Omelets are one thing I don't love to demo because you never actually know how it will turn out.  This video works great every time!

Thing #18: YouTube and Videos

YouTube is such a great site for finding great video resources for the classroom or just for entertainment.  TeacherTube also has a lot of great videos as well.  "Introducing the Book" is hilarious.  As difficult as it may seem to figure out technology, it usually is fairly simple . . .most of the time.  
I found some food demo videos and clips that I can use in my foods class.  Instead of sharing one of those I chose to share a song near and dear to the students in my 3rd period class. They can break out into this song at any point while cooking and it will spread until the majority of the class is singing or humming along.   (Here's to hoping the link actually worked!)

#17: Library Thing

 I am officially a "Library Thing" User.  This seems like a good tool for keeping track of books you want to read or have read but I found the site a bit crowded with information.  There is a lot going on, at least on the home page, but I eventually was able to navigate through and figure out what I was looking for.  I do like how once you sign up, it links you to local news and events at libraries in the area.  You can check out my library here.  It's a cool site but I don't know how often I will access it and manage my library.  It would be a great tool to use for my book club.

Split-Second Cookies

Thing #16 Continued: Split-Second Cookies

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Ready in: 35 minutes

Servings: 30 cookies

Ingredients

3/4 cup butter

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup raspberry or strawberry jam

3 Tablespoons powdered sugar

Directions:

1)  In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in egg and vanilla.  Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.

2)  Roll cookie dough into 1-inch balls.  Make a slight indentation with index finger.  Fill with a spoonful of jam.

3)  Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges.  Cool for 2 minutes.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Remove to wire racks to cool.

Thing #16: Online Productivity Tools

       Let me first share how much I love Gmail.  Having a Gmail account makes it so convenient to sign up for cool things like: this blog and Zoho.  I love that you don't have to set up an entirely new username every time you want to start an account.  I just have to type in my gmail email and password and I am set.  It makes it one less username/password to remember, love that.
       I am excited about Zoho!  It is just like GoogleDocs which I was introduced to by some of my students (we used it in yearbook).  The reason I love these types of programs/sites is because you can access saved work anytime from any computer with the internet.  That is so amazing and convenient.  I am ready to save all my school docs (like 100+ recipes!) on Zoho so I don't have to worry about keeping track of a flash drive (mine actually broke this year, so I lost all the work that was saved on it!).  Also, I don't have to type recipes at home, and then email them to myself so I can have them at school the next day, I can just access them from Zoho.  I guess the SchoolLoop locker does the same thing but I have never used it.  I think I will stick with my Zoho account for now . . time to start typing recipes.  I wonder if you can import docs from Word that are already on your computer?  Okay . .I just tried it and it totally works.  You can import any doc from your computer and then access it through Zoho.  Amazing!!  Pretty sure this is my favorite "Thing" so far!
     I typed up a new recipe that I got from a fellow foods teacher.  I have not made these cookies before but it looks like a great recipe!  Let me see if I can successfully post the recipe from Zoho . . .