Thing #14

The two tools I played with were:
http://30boxes.com/
http://www.mixbook.com/
http://www.wordle.net/

  I didn't really take too much time playing with these tools but the time I did spend was great. I was drawn to mixbook because I love to make pictures slideshows and collages of my family. It turns out you can create picture books and pay to have them printed, which I thought was pretty cool. I didn't see a way to share your album with others, but this tool also allows you to create yearbooks for your class, which some teachers like to do.   I thought Wordle.net was an interesting website. From what I saw, you can simply create "word clouds" with different fonts, colors and color schemes. What I really liked is that you can print them out or share them with other people by saving it to the wordle gallery. For example, if I wanted to make a poster ( which I did) with different reading words such as: characters, main idea, setting etc. I could make it, print it and share it with other teacher friends. The last tool I played around with is 30 boxes. This tool is simply a way to keep organized. The tool allows you to enter birthdays, email addresses, to do list, remainders etc. I didn't think much of this tool but I plan to spend more time learning more about these three tools and the ones I didn't get to explore.
As far as social features, I think Wordle. net, as I mentioned before, is a great way to create posters and share with other teachers. I still have to go back and see what other features this tools offers, but I really liked the "word clouds." I was also thinking that if I had an upper class, I would share my calendar from 30 boxes with them. I think this would be a great way to keep up with classroom assignments and even classmates birthdays.