Web+2.0

//This was a cool assignment that allowed to research and try some of the great new Web 2.0 tools that can help us in our classrooms//. //There is everything from Prezi which is a more modern, interactive power point like tool to sites that give you neat templates to create quizzes and tests. Through researching many different sites, I realized what great resources modern teachers have at their hands if they are only willing to reach out and use them. I intend to use many of the techniques below along with others that have not even been developed yet to enhance my teaching skills and keep my students interested.// Prezi at prezi.com is a really cool alternative to the traditional boring power point presentations. It allows us as teachers to present information to students in the way that more of them think which is non-linear. It has great ways to stimulate creativity like adding images to go with the presentation while using visual literacy techniques, and hidden images to add intrigue to your presentations. Its features also include clip art options, different types of diagrams, and creative transitions between information and pictures. As a teacher there would be a multitude of ways to use this site to engage your students whether it’s a new way to lecture more interactively or a different way to deliver a quiz as one of the Prezi presentations showed. Prezi is more fluid than power point and allows for the teacher’s personality to show through more in addressing the class. It has a lot of lessons instructing you how to use it which makes it simple and straightforward for any teacher with basic internet skills. I will be teaching history and social studies, and I can see using this to spice up what is sometimes considered to be a dull subject. By using interesting and relevant images to the event in history that you are teaching about, to different types of text layout, and diagrams I would be able to capture my students attention more readily. There is also a feature to make amazing timelines that would be easy to incorporate in a history classroom and make them come alive more than the traditionally dull chronological timeline. Podcasting is also an interesting tool for both entertainment and educational purposes. The podcasting sites such as mypodcast.com are a collection of audio files that anyone can upload and store in archives. It is a great way to access current events from all different perspectives via radio broadcasts from all over the world. There are also many educational audio files to access on many different subjects including lectures from different teacher’s classrooms. I think that podcasting lectures would be an interesting way to utilize the technology even at the middle school or high school level. This would allow students to review at home, or not miss out on valuable information if they missed school that day. It also would give parents the opportunity to more readily assist their children with homework at home and get a feel for the classrooms that their child spends time in. Another great way to use this is by assigning student podcast projects and allowing them to creatively express themselves in different ways. It would be a good way to turn a mundane project into an interesting challenge. You could also have students use this as a research tool to find differing opinions from scholars on the same subject and then compare and contrast that based off the reading that you are doing for class. Springnote (springnote.com) is a really interesting application of the Web 2.0 era. It is essentially an online notebook that can either be personal or shared with any others of your choosing. For educational purposes this is an easy way for those working on group projects to safely share their notes and files. It allows for collaboration over the web with great organizational features and privacy settings. Its applications don’t seem to go too far beyond that. This is applicable to the classroom because it allows students to collaborate on projects that you assign them, and share ideas over the web without meeting. I am currently working on a group project for another class and may experiment with this technology. As teachers it allows us to teach another important skill beyond collaboration, and that is organization and note taking. This is something a lot of students aren’t taught which would greatly benefit them in their educational and eventually professional careers. By allowing the teacher access to the different groups of student’s online notebooks, the teacher has a chance to monitor progress and offer encouragement. Yacapaca.com is a site dedicated to the creation and sharing of quizzes and tests by and for teachers. This site would be a good resource for teachers new and old as they continue to find new ways to assess the knowledge retained by their students. It also allows for a much more creative and interactive test experience with some of the tools on the site. In addition it gives the teacher a different way to test the students as they can take them right online. The teacher then can track the grades online. It would allow me as a high school teacher to access much useful information and questions that other peer teachers are using to assess their students. I could also change up the normal routine a couple times a semester by giving online quizzes to take some of the tedium out of test taking. This would be a more stimulating way for most students to take a test, and also would allow the teacher an easy grading system and organization tool. Students would also be able to access their grades online. It would bring elements of the online college courses that are so prevalent today, and give the students experiences in another way of learning. This site (communitywalk.com) allows you to create maps for the educational realm, for the community, for friends, and for professional purposes. It allows you to create routes, to add audio, video, comments, or photos. This could have some instructional and educational opportunities along with personal use such as creating maps for friends to your lake house for example. Students could document their vacations and include it in a history or geography project. By say attaching photos or video of them at historical landmarks at some point in their lives, it would enhance a project or paper as a bonus link. Teachers could also use this as an instructive tool by creating their own maps to present information to the class. It would be especially useful in my fields of geography and history. I could make a map of the areas that show key geographic features in Colorado, or of some of the major historical events that helped develop the state into what we see today. This would be a good supplement to many lessons and would help the students visualize the specifics of what you are teaching. This may give them a more useable application of the knowledge by linking the lessons to places and areas that they may familiar with. The teacher would have the remedy to a possible lack of maps available in the textbooks or elsewhere.
 * __ Prezi __**
 * __ My Podcast __**
 * __ Springnote __**
 * __ Yacapaca __**
 * __ Community Walk __**