YouTellYou

YouTellYou is a new web tool we learned about today. It is a social network where you can upload pictures to make it look like a magazine. We were supposed to make a story about a moment in our life that has changed who we are. I made mine on when we got our new house.

My family moved my 8th grade year to Van Meter. We found this really small log cabin, right off of f-90 past Van Meter. We really liked the location, and the view. My parents knew that it wasn't going to be big enough. So we decided to re-model, and make it bigger.

We ended up making it two times bigger. We added two more garages, a third story, and we added on to the side. It took about a year to re-model. It was so worth it, we love our home now.

When the house was finished we were given the option to move schools. Our parents wanted it to be our decision, so we visited Van Meter. We loved it, my brother Evan and I knew that we wanted to go to a small school. Valley was getting to big and we thought we would get more opportunities at a smaller school.

Our parents supported our decision, and we still think to this day that we have made the right decision. If we didn't move in the first place I don't think I would have ever made it to Van Meter Schools. I have learned so much here, and I am glad we moved to Van Meter.

I hope you like my project. If you have any questions about how to use YouTellYou feel free to ask. :)

Here is the link to my full project. http://youtellyou.com/story.php?id=1075

Dipity Project

We learned about a cool new website the other day in PLN. It is called Dipity. This website allows you to create your own timeline. You can use it for a school project like we did, or just do it for fun. This site also lets you have a profile, so you can create a whole library of timelines. You also can look at other peoples timelines they have created, and you can follow them.

We tried Dipity out in PLN, we were asked to make a timeline about something we are passionate about. Something that dates back twenty years ago, I chose Motley Crüe. I am very passionate about music, one of my favorite bands is Motley Crüe. I have seen them in concert and they are great, I have also read their books. One of my life goals is to meet Motley Crüe, so I felt like they would be a great topic to do my Dipity project on. :)

Here is a link to see my Dipity.

The Social Network Field Trip

My PLN class just got out of the movie The Social Network. We talked about going to see this movie about the social network, Facebook, as a field trip. We thought as a PLN class we should go see a movie that is all about connecting with people, together.

We ended up going to On The Border. Mrs. Miller, Bri, Meghan, JD, Jordan, and I met up at 6:30 for dinner. Then it was off to the movie. All of us, with the exception of Mrs. Miller, went in there not knowing what to expect. Mrs. Miller saw it the week before and said it is really “wordy” but a good movie. I was excited to see it however. I was really curious to see how Facebook really got started.

I ended up loving it! It was so interesting how this little idea turned into a multi-billion dollar company. Mark Zucherberg is a genius I concluded. He coded the whole site on his own. I think the scandal is just because the Winklevoss’s were angry they weren’t the ones who thought of Facebook first. Zucherberg’s ability to talk people into helping him, and the way he talks to the lawyers made me really listen and pay attention. They all talked so fast and so educated. It makes me want to be like them and be more influential with my words as they were in the movie.

I think everyone who has Facebook should go see the The Social Network. It really puts Facebook into perspective for me. It might not be all legit facts, but I think there is some credible information to the movie. I think it is a great story of how it all started, and what Facebook is like to this day. With over 500,000 million users I think Mark Zucherberg deserves to be worth a billion dollars.

Google Reader

Here is a great tool we learned about in class on Friday. It is called Google Reader, if you have a Gmail account you have Google Reader. This tool is a way to organize all your blogs you are subscribed to. When you want to follow a blog, this is a way you use RSS feeds to follow the blog you’re interested in. Just click on the orange RSS feed button, and click the Google Reader icon. Or if the RSS button isn’t there you can copy the URL and add a new subscription. This makes it so much easier to keep track of all your blogs you’re following and when they get updated. I am currently following my entire PLN class.

There is also a chrome extension for Google Reader you can install to your tool bar. It allows you to see the number of new posts that you haven’t read yet. This is a really helpful tool for this class, with all the blogs we are following. I think our entire PLN class should add this extension it will help them out a ton when it comes time to comment on other peoples blogs.

If you need any help installing the chrome extension or need help with Google Reader just let me know. I would be happy to help. :)