Monkey on Your Back

I decided to try out the Monkey on Your Back for my third emerging technology. I was not sure how this was going to work for me or whether or not I would like it; however the more I used it, the more I realized it would actually help. Monkey on Your Back is a website that allows you to create an account. Within your account you can send reminders to friends or family through email about things you want them to do or even upcoming events. I thought that this was really neat because as you approach the deadline for the event or task, this website will send a reminder to that person. With school, work, family and friends, I have a hard time trying to remember what to do and when. It is bad enough keeping track of my own life let alone reminding others of what I need them to do. This website is going to make it easier for me to communicate to family members and friends as well as keep track of my hectic life. I am really excited that I was introduced to this website because as a teacher I am going to constantly have things going on. With Monkey on Your Back, I can send reminders to my students' parents about upcoming events! Plus, it will save on paper. The only thing I do not like about Monkey on Your Back is that due to the fact that I simply signed up for the free trial, I was only able to set up 5 tasks. If I was going to use this in the future, I would have to purchase an account so that I could email more than just 5 of my classroom parents.

Here is the link to my accont. As you can see there are seperate tabs across the top of the webpage. The first one allows you to send a new task, the second shows you the tasks you have sent and the third shows you the tasks you are in charge of. Take a look, it's easy and I think you will all really enjoy the help!

http://monkeyon.com/monkeys/sent

PhotoShare

For this assignment I used a website called PictureTrail. With PictureTrail, you can upload pictures into a slideshow from your computer. I have heard from a lot of my friends who use this source that it is simple and can be so much fun! I tend to be one of those people who takes my camera with me everywhere I go. I just got my computer for graduation last year and I cannot tell you how many pictures I have saved on it! With PictureTrail, I was able to post some of my favorite pictures into a slideshow. I loved this site because you could edit the background, add special effects, and change the font from a list of choices. Although I was limited on what backgrounds, special effects and fonts I could use, I think that there is at least something that everyone could find that works for them. My favorite part about this site is that I could upload all of my pictures at once! It saved me so much time! If you are going to try out PictureTrail, I would reccomend giving yourself time. It is not something that takes a lot of time to upload or anything like that, but there are a lot of different things to look at. When you are deciding on backgrounds, font, etc. the website will automatically update your slideshow and give you a preview. You can change all of these things at any time and they are all in the same place which makes it easy. There are a lot, however, so make sure you have time to look through them in order to decide what you truely like best!

I have not used this website before, but I do think that now that I know about it and have tried it on my own, that I would use it again. I reccomend it to anyone who wants a fun and exciting way to show off all of their pictures!

Using RSS

I loved using this resource! I had so much fun browsing for RSS feeds that interested me. I thought it was really cool that you could have anything from educational sites, to news sites, to games, to even quotes and statistics of the day! In all honesty, I think that this will be something that I use often. I thought about making it my home page, but I decided that nothing could take facebook's place as my home page. :) Anyways, like I said, I thought it was really cool how you can add anything to this page. It is an easy way to keep track of so many things that are going on. For example, I even added a feed for the 2010 Olympics. Now, I can simply log on to igoogle and view the results to see how the USA is doing.
Overall, I was extremely impressed with this site. I have seen some of family members use it, which made it everything I expected, but at the same time I did not realize how much you could make out of it. I thought it was the same for everyone, but now that I learned how to personalize it, I really enjoy it. I had a hard time finding sites that included a link to add their website as a RSS feed, but then I saw that in the top right corner of the main igoogle page, it says something about adding feeds. I clicked on this and it opened up a wide range of sites to add to my page. You can even do it all at once and then edit your layout when you are done! Anyways, I hope you all find this resource as useful as I did!