One Last Blog

Hi everyone and welcome back for another week of my blog.  You can find me on twitter @barlottn  This will be my last blog of the semester.  I may resume my blog in the future but for now lets just day this will be my last blog.  This semester really seemed to fly by.  For some reason it seemed to of faster than my first semester at Stockton.  All in all it was definitely a successful semester.  I had my struggles during my first semester but I have definitely grown up a lot and become more professional since then.  I have learned to manage my time better and to give my very best on all my work.  Some of my classes have been introducing me to the professional world.  When I first signed up for Exploring Your Digital Toolbox I didn't really understand what I was getting myself into.  I figured it had something to do with technology but I didn't know exactly what it meant.  After taking this class I'm definitely glad I took the chance on this class.

This semester I learned a lot of new things in a short amount of time.  I had been on Twitter for some time but I learned that Twitter can be used as a PLN or a personal learning network.  My previous experiences with Twitter had been with my personal account which I used to communicate with friends and stay current with all the breaking news.  I never thought of it as a way to network myself or to use it in a professional way.  I learned that Twitter is a great way to network myself and it could even lead to a future job or professional relationships.  I also learned about linkedin which is a great app that helps you make professional connections.  I have already made a few connections on linkedin and its something that I will use more in the future when I look for a career.  Haiku Deck is another tool I will use in the future when creating presentations.  You can check out my previous blogs for my Social Media Project that I created about Larry Johnson.  And last but not least I used Weebly to create a professional website.  This was an awesome experience.  Creating a website brought back memories for me dating all the way back to high school when I took a web design class.  Web Design was one of my favorite classes in high school so I was pretty excited to hear that our final project was to create a website.  Feel free to check out my website and let me know what you think.  Any type of feedback is greatly appreciated: professional website link

Overall I really enjoyed this class and I will miss it.  This class has added a lot of great tools to my tool belt that I will continue to use.  This class also helped me develop myself in a professional way and taught me how to use Twitter the right way and to not abuse it which could hurt me when I try to get a job.  Thank you professor Calderwood and I would recommend your class to anyone at Stockton University.  

The future of a connected educator/Circuits

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog for week 10.  I can't believe this will already be the tenth week of my blog.  I only have a little over a week of school left.  It feels just like yesterday when I was at Ocean County College and now I'm almost done with my first full year at Stockton university.  Now let me get to what my class did this week.  This week class was very different.  Professor Calderwood had us work together in groups to make a circuit.  I remember building circuits my senior year of high school in physics class.  Lets just say anything science or physics related is my least favorite and probably my worst subjects.  So I was definitely a bit weary of this activity.  In the end it was enjoyable to work together with my classmates to build a circuit.  We use the circuit to operate the game frogger which was on one of my classmates tablets.  We were able to get the circuit board to work like a controller so we could play the game it was pretty interesting.  After that we played guitar hero with a cardboard cutout of a guitar.  We used play doh as if they were the buttons on the controllers.  We put the play doh on the cardboard and connected the wire to the play doh.  It was a fun activity.  Here is a picture of one of my classmates Jake playing the guitar:

I also read chapter nine of the Connected Educator this week.  The author talks about how social media has impacted and changed his life for the good.  He's been able to make so many relationships with other teachers, authors, and experts.  Without social media he would have most likely never of met this people.  His journey into connected learning is something he will never forget and most likely never give up.  You never know what the future holds for you.  The web is a place where connected educators can go out and find people to exchange thoughts and information with.  The web is so much more than just websites and databases with articles and other types of information.  Go out and make connections with people that could last a lifetime.  Don't just be a teacher become a connected learner so you can expose your students to a new wealth of knowledge.  It's impossible to master all the knowledge out there but teachers need to be able to expose student to all the knowledge out there.  

Thats another week of my blog.  Next week will me my last blog.  Until then be safe everybody.  

Creating Websites Can be easy

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog for week 9.  I hope you didnt miss my blog too much and if you did don't worry I'm back this week.  You can find me on twitter @barlottn.  This week I'm going to talk about social networking tools and how to create websites.  First, lets talk about social networking tools.  Social media gets a bad reputation at times because some people use it improperly or it can get you in trouble if your venting problems or opinions.  With all that being said its still a great tool for schools to use.  Being involved online with social media is great for staying up to date with all the latest education and technology.  Being social online will allow for the best education for any student today and in the near future.  There are so many great web tools out there for students to use so that they can express their opinions and talents.  TodaysMeet is a great way for teachers and students to communicate.  TodaysMeet gives teachers the opportunity to create a private back channel can be used to discuss and document classroom interactions.  This is a great way for students to have their questions answered even when their not in class.  Another great communication tool is Skype.  Skype is one of the earliest video chat technologies to gain significant popularity.  It allows two people in different places to have a face to face conversation.  Skype is an awesome tool for teachers.  Teachers can get a guest speaker and have a live interview with that person for the entire class to experience.  Edmodo is one of the first social networks designed for the classroom.  Edmodo is a great way for teachers and student to share assignments with each other.  Teachers can sign up for free with Edmodo and create a digital class for them and there students.  I got most of this information from Untangling The Web.

Now I'm going to talk about integrating websites with social media.  First, I'm going to talk about IFTTT.  IFTTT stands for "If this, then that."  IFTTT's are great for saving you time and can be used as  short cuts or reminders.   IFTTT allows users to create "recipe's" which are a chain of simple conditional statements which are triggered by other web services like twitter or Instagram.  Here are some examples.
1. This recipe will make it easier to change profile pics.  When your Facebook profile changes so will your twitter profile picture.
2. When someone tags you in a photo on Facebook it will automatically be sent to your dropbox.
3. Receive a text when the weather changes.
4. If your a reader you can have an email sent to you when a new free e-book is added to the top 100 on kindle.
5. You can have your tweets sent to a google spreadsheet.
6.  You can create a google calendar of your tweet schedule.
7.  Add Instagram photographers to a twitter list.
8. You can create a photo album with iOS and have them automatically uploaded to Facebook.
These next few recipes are for Instagram users:
9.  Send tagged photos to tumblr.
10. Post Instagram pics on twitter as a picture.
11. Save all Instagram uploads to a folder in Google Drive.
12.  Have your Instagram photos sent immediately to your Facebook album.
I hope you all can use some of these great recipes.

Now let's talk about creating websites.  Creating a website sounds hard but its actually easy.  There are a few websites out there that are designed to help create websites and its super easy.  Wordpress, Wix, and Weebly are just a few great website to help with creating your own website.  Here's a video on how to use Weebly:

Wix is also a great website to use for web building.  They have a bunch of great templates so that you can develop a website rather easy.  Just plug in any information you want and Wix will help you create a fantastic website with ease.  These websites do all the heavy lifting so you can develop a website without having to pay for it.  I hope you enjoyed my blog.  I will be back next week.

Connected Learning

Hi everyone and welcome back to week 8 of my blog.  You can find me on twitter @barlottn.  Last week was a really busy week for me.  I had two presentations on the same day last week which was kind of nerve racking.  It definitely was not easy trying to put together two presentations and practice for the presentation.  One presentation went well while the other not so good.  I had to dress formally for my presentation in my Business Law class.  That presentation did not go well because my group ran out of time while presenting and I got cut off due to time.  My other presentation went pretty well.  This presentation was for my Exploring Your Digital Toolbox class.  I did a presentation on Larry Johnson the former Kansas City Chiefs running back.  I took a public speaking class at OCC which has really helped me with presentations.  I did my best to use bullet points to remind of what I needed to talk about.  You never want to read directly from the slides because your not connecting with your audience at all.  Sometimes I get nervous and forget important information that I want to say about my topic but for this presentation I did not forget anything at all.  So overall I felt like the presentation went pretty well for me.  Its always a great feeling to the presentation out of the way without embarrassing yourself.  I also used a Haiku Deck to create my presentation.  Haiku Deck is something that I have been using and its great for presentations.  It keeps your slides short and simple so that you don't just read off them.  Heres the link to my presentation, feel free to check it out.

This week we read chapter 5 from The Connected Educator.  The chapter started off by discussing social bookmarking.  Social bookmarking is a great way to organize your favorite and most used websites.  There are millions of webpages out there so its important that you can organize and share articles and different websites with friend or co-workers.  Delicious is one of the most popular social bookmarking sites out there.  When researching you can just throw the links into your Delicious account so that you can sort through them later and gather the best information possible.  You can also connect with other users or educators on Delicious and share different sites with each other.  Diigo is another social bookmarking site thats rather similar to Delicious but it has some cooler features.  There is a feature called My Groups where you share documents and sites with people in your local professional community or global community.

Twitter is a great place to communicate, express your feelings, and share information.  You can use it professionally or personally.  Twitter is considered to be a microblogging service because it allows you to share information quickly and efficiently with your personal learning network.  With Twitter you can also direct message a person which is like an email and is more private so its not out there for everyone to see.  Twitter is great for networking because there a tons of people in the Twitterverse that share the same field or career as you.

Google Docs is tool a great tool to use in place of Microsoft Office especially if you don't have the money to pay for Microsoft Office.  For a group project Google Docs is awesome because it allows you and your group members to work on a paper or slideshow simultaneously.  Google Docs is used online instead of having software saved to your computer.  You can also work from different computers since your work is saved on the web.  You no longer have to worry about losing or forgetting that pesky usb drive.

Thats another week of my blog in the books.  See you all next week.

Apps and Chrome extensions that will make your life easier

Hi everybody welcome back to my blog.  I know I took last week off but hopefully this week will make up for it.  You can find me on twitter @barlottn.  Last week I learned about iPad apps and Chrome extensions.  Our professor Kyle Calderwood set us up with some great guest speakers on google hangout last week.  The guest speakers were @dwmalone, @geekyteach, and @teachintechgal.  It was awesome having them as guest speakers and I really learned a lot.  They showed us a ton of Chrome extensions and iPad apps that I had never heard before.  Even if you don't have an iPad like me, you can still learn about some great chrome extensions that you can use for your home computer or laptop.

What exactly is a Chrome extension?  A chrome extension is an application that runs inside your Google Chrome browser.  It allows you to customize your browser with helpful everyday tools that will provide you more functionality.  These extensions can also be shortcuts to websites so you don't have to waste extra time browsing.  There are a lot of great extensions out there but you have to be careful not to download too many.  Having too many Chrome extensions can slow down your browser.  You can have as many extensions as you want but always keep in mind that your memory, your computer speed, and your wifi speed can be effected by how many extensions you have.  So just keep an eye on those three things as you add new extensions.  A couple of cool Chrome extensions are Quizlet which can you study for test and quizzes, Readability will clear up all the clutter like adds and such so you can read articles without being distracted, and EasyBib which can help students created citations, reference pages, and find credible sources so they don't plagiarize.  To find more great extensions click on the link that I have embedded in the beginning of the paragraph.

The Chrome extension I am about to talk about is great for when you don't have enough time to read a long article but you have to read it.  Too LongDidn't Read (TLDR) is a fantastic extension that summarizes an article of your choose.  It condenses the article down and gives you the main points which are the most important.  In less than a minute you have synopsis of an article that your either needed to read or just wanted it to be condensed.  Most people like myself don't have the time or just don't feel like reading an entire article.  Theres only 24 hours in a day and they go by pretty fast so don't waste them reading an entire article that you don't want to read.  It also has some good reviews from other customers in the Chrome Web store.  It's always important to check the reviews of an app or extension before downloading so you know that it's legit and you don't waste your precious time.

This next app is for iPads.  It's called ZooKazam and its a really fun app especially for kids.  You print off different targets that the app gives you and the app will bring that piece of paper to life.  You can take pictures and videos of the animal with the app.  It also allows you to change the weather and the light effects around the animal to make it even more realistic.  You can even change the scene that the animal is in to make it more realistic or to teach students what environments these animals live in.  There are 40 different animals including 10 dinosaurs.  This is a great tool for a elementary or science teacher who wants to bring animals to life in their classrooms for the kids.  The app is free but you only get limited animals.  For just .99 cents you can unlock all the animals.  This app also has great reviews in the app store.

 
  
 That's it for this week.  I hope you enjoyed my blog and I will be back next week.

Alternatives to Powerpoint

Hello everybody welcome to my blog.  My name is Nick Barlotta and you can find me on twitter @barlottn.  In this week of my blog I will be talking mostly about presentation tools and alternatives to powerpoint.  It seems like everyone uses powerpoint designed by Microsoft for their presentations.  Its time to branch out and explore some alternatives that are more interesting and possible even better than powerpoint.  The first alternative is Haiku deck which is somewhat similar to powerpoint but differs in some areas.  Haiku deck has styles and formats already made up for you to chose from for your slides.  You can also incorporate your own pictures from your library into your slides.  Haiku Deck is all about whipping together attractive slides without having to spend an eternity on them.  Haiku Deck can also be shared via Facebook, Twitter, or email.  The next alternative is Kingsoft Presentation Free 2013.  This alternative is extremely similar to powerpoint.  This program runs in Windows and emulates the standard slideshow building process.  You can add backgrounds, music, sounds, and animations to your slides.  They also have templates to give you ideas for your slides.  The final alternative I will talk about is Prezi.  With Prezi, you can develop eye catching presentations that stray from the traditional slideshow presentations.  Instead of going from one slide to the next Prezi flies from one slide to the next.  You can add videos, music, and any info you need.

Im going to continue along with the idea of using alternatives to powerpoint.  Next up is Google Slides.    This article gave me five reasons to use Google Slides over powerpoint.  Reason #1 is collaboration.  Being able to easily share and simultaneously edit your Google Drive documents is a great feature.  Reason #2 is Simple UI Encourages Simpler Presentations.  Google Slides has less features but this allows for a cleaner presentation.  Sometimes powerpoint presentations have too much going on which can be distracting and annoying.  Reason #3 is Offline access for Editing and Presenting.  You can now download a Google Slides app from the Chrome Web Store which allows you to access Google Slides offline.  Reason #4 is Access Presentation from any device.  You can access Google Drive from any browser.  Reason #5 is Easy Web Publishing and Sharing.  Google slides makes it easy to share a presentation on the web.  Google Slides has many advantages which powerpoint does not.

Powerpoint can be complicated and distracting with its multitude of features.  Haiku Deck is great for making a simple yet elegant presentation.  Haiku Deck makes it difficult to make a cluttered slideshow which is great so your viewers can focus on whats important.  This application restricts you to just two lines of text and five bullet points.  This makes the presenter learn information about the topic he/she is presenting.  No one likes when a presenter just reads off the slides.  One of the problems with Haiku Deck is that you cannot deviate from the default setting for layout and style but that can also be a good thing.  All in all Haiku Deck is great for making presentations.

The final thing I will be talking about in my blog is chapter 3 of Untangling the Web.  This chapter gives us some alternatives to boring powerpoint slides in which the presenter just reads the info off the slides.  SlideShare is a social hub that allows you to upload your presentations and share them with other educators across the globe.  They are also integrated with Facebook and LinkedIn.  They have tons of information and not just presentations like powerpoint.  Word documents and PDFs can also be shared through SlideShare.  Poll Everywhere is a mobile based student response system.  Poll Everywhere can be simple but the deeper you explore the more features you will find.  All you have to do is enter in questions and add answers to create polls for free.  Poll Everywhere is great for the classroom.  Its a great way to get valuable feedback for Teachers and even parents.  Prezi is another great alternative to powerpoint.  Its a different interesting way to create a presentation.   Prezi doesn't have slides.  Prezi basically takes you on a tour of the presentation taking you to the next bit of information, video, or picture.  Prezi is one of the first two display that there is so much more to a presentation than the traditional powerpoint with slides.  Prezi is a great tool for presenters.  I hope you enjoyed my blog and I will be back next week. Thanks.

The many uses of Evernote

Hi, my name is Nick Barlotta and this my blog.  You can follow me at @barlottn on twitter.  This week I got to watch a google hangout video that previously recorded by Professor Calderwood and uploaded to youtube.  The video had some interesting information about how teachers can use twitter to find other professionals in their field and connect with them.  Adam Taylor who is a science teacher, used twitter to connect with scientists and later have them interact with him and his students. He has created his own hashtag and chat on twitter.  He has hundreds of people that interact in the chat.  He found out that twitter is a great tool to connect and interact with people who can further your knowledge and share experiences with each other.  Twitter is a fantastic tool when its used properly.  Finding hashtags on twitter that are related to your field is a great way to connect with people and learn more about your major.  Twitter could even get you a job if your able to connect with the right people.  Creating a personal learning network on twitter is a great way to help jump-start your career and meet new people.

 

Evernote is a wonderful web tool that allows users to bookmark, record voicemails, take text and voice notes, upload pictures, docs, PDFs and files, and capture images and information on the web.  There are also applications that you can use on your phone to access Evernote and do different things.  Evernote is really great for keeping notes and organizing them.  For people who have trouble keeping notes and different things organized don't worry cause Evernote is their for you just sign up.  Evernote allows you to make different folders so you can keep your notes separated.  You can also search documents and key words in Evernote to find specific information in your notes that you were trying to find.  Evernote also allows users to share notes via email or social media.  One of the best and most important reasons for using Evernote is that you can access it on the web or download its software to your computer.  Anyway you slice it Evernote is a fantastic tool.  

Ever forget you had something important to do but it just slipped your mind.  Thats pretty much me everyday of my life,  always forgetting something.  For someone like me that can barely remember what I had for breakfast that morning Evernote is awesome.  Evernote has a reminder feature that the user can set to for anytime of the day to keep them on track.  For students this feature is fantastic because we have busy schedules and its not easy balancing work, school work, and class.  The reminder feature is also a great tool for teachers.  They can use it to download documents and remind their students when its due.  If can also get reminder notifications to your phone which is the best way to keep yourself up to date with what you need to do that day.  The Evernote reminder feature is even great for people who have graduated from school and have careers.  Need to remember that you have a meeting in the afternoon just set your reminder and have a notification sent right to your phone. 

Even a New York Times bestseller like Michael Hyatt uses Evernote.  He uses Evernote for public speaking.  Hyatt has setup his Evernote into four different notebooks: Illustrations, Jokes, Quotes, and Statistics.  He goes through his notes or web articles and takes information he likes and copies into it notebooks for later use.  He can highlight things from digital books and just copy and paste them right into his Evernote.  Even with Traditional books Hyatt can take pictures of what he has highlighted and put them into his Evernote.  In general, Evernote is a great way to manage time and set reminders, organize and take notes, and share great information with other users.  Thank you for reading my week 5 blog.  I hope you enjoyed it and have a great week.

All about Zite

Hi, my name is Nick Barlotta and you can tweet to me at @barlottn.  This will be my fourth blog and I'm definitely getting the hang of it while I learn new things and share them with you.  I read The Connected Educator this week and it learned some really great information.  Professional learning communities are great but connected learning communities are the now.  Educators can use connected learning communities to interact with others.  Three ways they use a connected learning communities to interact and communicate are professional learning communities,  personal learning networks, and communities of practice or inquiry. The connected learning communities uses a three pronged approach to professional development which is  local community, global network, and bounded community.  Connected learning communities are also a great way to share different ideas and cultures.  A successful learning community must embrace diversity in order to evolve with the times and stay relevant.  Diversity is a strength not a weakness in all aspects of life.

Zite is an awesome app that caters to your needs when it comes to news. Its a great new way to get your news. Its available in the app store on both iPhone and Android devices.  This fantastic app has a topic for everyone even if you are not a big fan news in general.  In a few minutes you can set up profile and get all the news you need. You can link Zite up with twitter and share articles with your followers.  You can also give Zite a thumbs up or down which tells the app to pull more articles from that source.  According to Zite is doesn't give out your information to advertisers which is always a good thing.  Zite is user friendly and has hundred of thousands of downloads and was even bought out by CNN.

Zite has been so popular that it was bought by CNN then sold by CNN to Flipboard.  The deal between CNN and Flipboard is valued at $60 million.  Flipboard wants to capitalize on Zite's technology.  Zite's personalization technology is what helped make it so popular and now very coveted.    The app delivers great results based upon its ability to cater to the users need.  With Zite and Flipboard teaming up together the sky is the limit.  Thats all for my week four blog.  Hope you enjoyed it.

Facebook is not your Friend

Hello everybody, my name is Nick Barlotta and you can find me on twitter @barlottn.  This is the third week of my blog and I am starting to get the hang of it.  Last week I learned about a website that can track your location by tweets or posting on Instagram.  Its called "Ready or Not".  I found this website interesting and frightening at the same time.  My first thought was that it's awesome that it can show every location you tweeted or posted from.  Then I thought it's great for someone that wants to stalk you or find you.  I doubt theres anyone that wants to find me but this tool could become very problematic for people that owe money to someone or have a crazy stalker.  Those two situations are very real for some people out there but not most of us.  This is a great tool but in the wrong hands it can be used a weapon.  So consider putting putting your twitter and Instagram on private and turn off geotagging while your at it.

Do you remember when you could not save your bookmarks online so that you could access them from other computers?  You may but I don't because I'm not old enough to remember that.  A website called Del.icio.us.  It was founded by Joshua Schechter and this site introduced people to social bookmarking so that people could find great sites that had the information they wanted much easier.  Josh Schechters idea of social bookmarking paved the way for newer sites like symbalooedu, Diigo, and eduClipper.  Symbaloo is a page with bunch of tiles that can be made into your own personal page of your favorite websites.  Diigo is a site that first appears as a blank page which can be turned into a place where all your favorite sites are stored.  Educlipper is a similar site but its specifically used for educators to share information with colleagues and students easier.  All this information I shared with you in this paragraph can be found in Untangling the Web.

Facebook is a tool for people and friends to share photos and have conversations with each other but little do they know it's a great way for people to stalk you and steal information from you.  Your basically giving strangers personal information about yourself.  Facebook is also a breeding ground for cyberbullying and catfishing .  There are tons of fake profiles out there with pictures that are taken from other facebooks profiles or found online from other sites.   Facebook is also allowing marketers to look through your personal information to determine what adds they should market too you.  Be careful because Facebook might not be as safe as you thought it was. 

Before you make your next tweet or post on Instagram think about how it could make an impact on you in the future.  Employers are now checking Twitter and Instagram to see who you really are.  So drunken party pics are probably best kept off social media.  You don't want to scare away a potential employer just because you like to have fun in your spare time.  Keeping your Twitter and Instagram on private is probably a good idea.  And most important don't bash your employers and co-workers.  Keep it classy.  I hope you enjoyed my blog this week and don't worry there will be more next week.  

Hi my name is Nick Barlotta and you can find me on twitter @barlottn.  I'm back for the second week of my blog and I'm ready to talk about different topics this week.  This week I learned that Google is much more than just a great search engine.  For the last year I thought that I needed word on my Mac computer so that I could write papers and such.  I had no idea that I could use Google Drive to write papers.  It's also such an easy and user friendly word processor.  With google drive your document will automatically save.  As of June 2013 Google drive introduced 65 different languages that you can practice with. No need to bring a flash drive because you can access your documents by logging into your google account from any computer.  You can also work on a document with multiple at the same time from different computers which is great for a group presentation.  I wish I would of knew about google drive long before I learned about it.  Another awesome tool from Google is their translate app that can be used through your phone.  You can now use Google Translate on the go through your phone.  You just activate the app and set it to what languages you want translated.  Watch this video on how it works which is pretty mind boggling:

Personal learning networks (PLN) are a great way to get connected to with other professionals inside and outside of your professional field.  These connections and relationships you make can help further your career and possibly lead to a new job and new experiences.  The Connected Educator  is a great book for developing and learning about PLN's.  Networks are a great way to find new information and ideas and bring it back to share with your communities.  When developing a PLN always make sure that you conduct yourself in a professional and ethical manner.  I hope you learned some new things and enjoyed another week of my blog.    

Hello my name is Nick Barlotta and you can find me on twitter @barlottn.  After reading a few different articles I chose three that I found the most interesting.  One of the most interesting articles that I found was about lists on twitter.  I have been on Twitter for about two years now and had no idea what lists were.  I mostly just follow friends and YouTube gamers on twitter.  I check my twitter feed a few times per day but only tweet a few times a week.  I follow close to 70 people on twitter so I can go through my feed with ease and not get too bogged down with tweets.  Over the years I have seen many people who follow thousands of people and I always wondered how do they go through all those tweets on their feed.  With that many tweets I figured they either did not their check twitter feed or just aimlessly scrolled through twitter all day but who has time for that.  I'm actually going to use lists on twitter so that I can organize my tweets and possible find new people through some of my followers lists as well.

 The next article I read was about a school in Newport, England using e-learning via Twitter.  A few weeks ago I would have never thought that Twitter could be used for learning.  Whenever I have used Twitter in the past it has been to communicate with friends and joke around.  I saw Twitter as a way to communicate, meet new people, and to stay up to date on breaking news of any kind.  The Newport school is taking education to another level with e-learning.  Denise Richards the head teacher of the Newport school is the genius and leader behind their new e-learning movement.  She wants to further the education her students and keep them informed.  This keeps the departments and faculty in sync and up to date with their teaching techniques. E-learning is a great way to keep up with the times.

I have heard about blogs and probably read a few in my life but this is my first blog ever.  A Blog
is kind of like an online diary that other people around the world can read.  Blogs can be personal, professional, and many other things.  They are a good way to express oneself and also get your message out there.  Blogs can be written by one author or co-written by multiple authors.  Wordpress.com is a popular website where you can create a blog or a website.  That's all I have for my blog today but I will be back next week with some new information and my opinions.