Fellow Bloggers

http://rayaintheclasroom.blogspot.com/

http://apple2cm.blogspot.com/

http://garrisv20.blogspot.com/

Above are links to fellow educators' blogs that I found inspiring.

Wordle

Wordle is a great resource for pointing out key ideas. For instance in the one I created, which you can view here, I used Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and in it many adjectives are highlighted as being repeated, this would be excellent in advocating to students the importance of the elements of storytelling, emphasizing detail (mainly sensory details) and not plot. That it is tone/mood that evoke a story's ability to stay in your head. Wordle is so simple to use as well, in no time at all you've got a great catch piece that's readily available for discussion and input, plus you don't have to create an account to utilize the service which is awesome! Who wants to remember yet another username/password?

Digital Storytelling

Toondoo is a really simple and fun tool to put quick cartoons together. I'm not really creative in coming up with these kinds of things but this made it easy to do by taking the pressure off of artistic capability. I can definitely see using this resource as a means of quickly going over classroom procedures, rules, and policies in an entertaining and accessible way.

Wiki

I really do NOT like wikispaces. It was NOT user-friendly and the functionality of it, I really don't like. My district asks us to use Edmodo which offers a "Facebook-esque" quality that all of my students are use to and makes it supremely easy to communicate with my students about upcoming projects and past assignments/notes with a feature to send notifications by a secure third party in either an email or text message. As for the collaboration feature which wikispaces laud, you can gain the same functionality through Google Drive (which offers the ability to collaborate on Google's PowerPoint presentations, Word Documents, Spreadsheets, etc.).

Pinterest (Alt. Assignment)

My district loves using the latest trends in technology so I had to have a Pinterest account in order to participate in a technology training. I can definitely see the appeal of Pinterest. It's a great medium to share ideas and as they say, "not have to reinvent the wheel" and it allows you to get the perspective of teachers from across the nation and otherwise. However, like I'm sure others who are not creatively apt can attest, it can be extremely overwhelming. Some of the ideas are amazing and I tip my hat off but at the same time I lament, "Can't I just find something simple that gets the job done?" Which is the biggest problem I have with Pinterest...it seems to be filled with only the over the top and takes forever to find something I feel confident tackling myself.