Web 2.0 Tools and Teaching

My top five tools from this unit...5 really, only 5...It is hard to pick there are just so many great tools out there.

In no particular order...

1. Youtube and teachertube and ted and...can I count all these as one? Great reources for videos on anything you could want and a lot of them are good too! I love all of the commoncraft series...
2. Delicious- great for keeping all of those great links organized and best of all share them with others!
3. Jing- Great for online tutorials and to show how to do just about anything...much better than screen shots.
4.Animoto- Love it, Love it...So easy to make a really cool video that looks like it took hours...
5.Podcasting- although this is not really one particular site...A great tool with so many uses.

I liked  www.go2web2.0.net, although as a resource it is a bit overwhelming. The search works well and you can narow it down to the type of tool that you are looking for. I did discover tons of sites that I had never heard of before...but were they any good or useful?? not sure...

My mother received the Kindle for Christmas and loves it. She was skeptical at first but has come to love the ease of it. Now she wants me to get one... We can share books just like we do now except without actually needed to see each other. or even "touch" the same pages. I don't know if I am ready yet. I will admit the Kindle does feel nice in your hand and the screen really does look like a printed page. here is just something about the feel of a book and the pages, the cover and the cuddling with it. I don't know if  am ready to give that up. However, she can pre-order books and have them "delivered" as soon as they are released, no driving to the store, no waiting on the hold list at the library or even forgetting the book came out...She also loves that when she finishes a book...no matter where or when...she can have another in minutes. The Kindle also highlights and defines words for you plus all sorts of other features but  don't know if i would use all those..
Surprisingly, students at Princeton were given Kindles with all of their course work loaded on it and didn't like it. They missed the interaction with the printed page and didn't think it was functional enough.
Hmm I still haven't decided if I will get one or not but I am also not in a hurry to go out and spend the $350...

Social Networks and Gaming

This week’s topic is one that I have little interest or experience with; social networks and games. I do think that these will eventually have their place in education. We are already using Facebook at my school to get messages out to students and have a page for each extra curricular club. I am just not sure how these applications fit into my life and why I need to be online socially interacting with  everyone…
My experience with World Of Warcraft has primarily been telling students to stop playing it on school time with the library computers. It doesn’t seem all that interesting to me but then again I was never a big fan of Zelda or any other ongoing games either. I revisited the site this week and it looks very complicated plus I don’t think I realized that you had to pay to play. I have heard some interesting stories of people meeting in the game and then dating in real life. I also watched a Dateline special about adults who were so addicted they did not do anything else with their days and nights other than play. I know my brother is into X-box live which seems similar and my parents are always complaining about the charges on their credit cards. I can see how these virtual worlds could be used in education to create an online virtual school with different classes or assignments that the students need to master in order to move on but I just am not sold on the whole gaming realm that it is in now. I also think there are a lot of issues with content that need to be resolved...kindof like the real world soo maybe I will just have to let that one go...
I also checked out Second Life, which I read and hear about often. I have been invited to meetings in Second Life but have never actually been there. I learned that a Slurl is a map link in Second Life. I looked at the quick start guide, which is 7 pages long… It seems easy enough to get started and then there are keyboard shortcuts you can use and…I guess it is still not enough to get me to login and create my second life. Do I really need one?
I have been on Myspace to look up different people when it was popular but have had almost no experience with Facebook. It just doesn’t interest me and seems like a big waste of my time. All of my students, friends and neighbors have accounts and are constantly on it. I signed up for the first time for this assignment and am stll unsure of what I will do with it. Maybe I am too private? But I don’t really want to upload photos to share with anyone. It did come up with some people that I should befriend, like classmates from high school and some people that I know in “real” life from my address book. The high school classmates were interesting to see but I don’t really feel the need to reconnect with someone that I haven’t spoken to in 15 years. I found my mother and requested to be her friend but I email and talk to her anyways so I am not sure if I need to “know “ her on Facebook as well. I guess the whole experience has left me wondering what is wrong with me that all these people just love and are a little addicted to Facebook and I really don’t think I need it in my life? Hmm maybe I am just showing what a digital immigrant I am?

Online Media

It was interesting (and time consuming!) to investigate online media this week. I always started out looking for videos and pod casts for the assignment but then oh..this looks interesting and before you know it hours have gone by and I am miles away from where I was supposed to be. I think this is what happens to our students as well. When using online media it would be best to download the media or to have the links on a website ready for the students to use to prevent them from getting “lost” looking around.
Teacher tube and Youtube are both great resources for video but I wish there was some way to restrict the content on youtube. There is a lot of great videos but a lot of not so great stuff too. I did find Carpet Skates though and they really do work! Who knew there could be so many videos? Sooo I ordered a pair…
Will have to let you know what color cast I pick...

Animoto is a great resource for students to quickly and easily create their own videos. It is easy to upload photos, pick a song and viola your video is mixed. The students and teachers have used this website to create book trailers, a video introduction to the high school for eighth graders and even made videos for the Constitutional amendments. Creating the videos also provides the opportunity to discuss copyright and what they can and can’t take off the web to create their video. The only complaint I get is that the 30 second free videos are too short. The students have a hard time limiting themselves to the thirty seconds. The teachers like the limited content because it makes the students really think about what to include. For this weeks assignment I have linked a video I created about the school and media center where I work using information from the DESE website.


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

For pod casting I have used Audacity but the teachers seemed to have some trouble with it. Our World Language department had used it for the AP exam and to have students practice speaking the language they are learning. Another product I like is Podium pod casting software by RM Education
It allows you to write scripts, edit and publish podcasts. It is easy to use and has a lot of options for students to tweak what they have recorded. You can also use the software with their Easispeak microphone which records MP3 files and has a USB for charging and download. Students can be roving reporters, the microphone has 128mb of memory, and then download it onto a computer to create a unique podcast.

I love, I mean loved my I-pod right up until the moment I dropped it on the treadmill and it smashed into the wall behind me…Kudos to Apple because although the screen shattered it still works..I just blindly hit the buttons until a song starts playing. My husband and I got each other the I-touch for Christmas oddly enough without even talking about it ahead of time. (Does this mean we are meant for each other?) While he loves his, I returned mine and bought a Wii…sorry Apple. The reason was that I already have a Blackberry and didn’t think I would lug the two devices around. Also, I discovered Pandora on my Blackberry and was hooked! I love the way you choose and artist and then it finds other songs you might like…and if you don’t just click on the thumbs down button and you are on to something else. Now all I have to worry about is not dropping my Blackberry the treadmill! Best of all it is free!!!! No more 99 cent and $1.29 downloads from itunes. Now I know I don’t own the songs but do I need to anyways? Just before my I-pod broke my computer broke and guess what? If you have not backed up your itunes they are gone…Lesson learned but Apple was unwilling to restore my songs even the ones I had purchased so bye bye to 5000 songs. I just don’t have it in me to rebuild so it is Pandora for now.
The I-touch does have a lot of other great things about it…music, movies, games and of course all those apps! There are some useful ones and some that just make for interesting conversations. Some interesting ones high school students might use…Drivers Ed, study for the driving test anytime, anyplace; Lumosity Brain Trainer, challenge you brain for positive effects and SAT Vocab Challenge.

Apps and more Apps...

  

  

   

Wow! What a great week of exploration. Tons of online tools to explore; some I was familiar with others I had heard of but never used and others I had never even heard of… 

My favorites..

Googledocs I use all the time, both to access my stuff from everywhere and also to collaborate with others on documents. Currently I am using it to write a grant. I am working with an English and Art teacher and we don’t need to set aside time to meet. We each are able to work whenever we have free time. One application that I had been on but did not have my own account was Flickr. I have looked at my friends photos and the Library of Congress’s collections. Creating an login was easy as was uploading photos and tagging them. Especially since when I went to create a login I discovered I already had one! After thinking about it I remembered  I had uploaded photos from my daughters 5th birthday party one time when I had a full memory card, someone else’s laptop and nowhere to save them. So I guess there is another use for the site...
Using this site with Big Huge Labs and the possibilities are nearly endless. You can create magazine covers and billboards plus neat things like a Rubic’s cube with your photos. Check out my new flickr set of photos from Martha’s Vineyard ...
Survey Monkey has so many uses…to survey faculty about new classes to offer or professional development options…By students to create surveys for everything from assignments to Senior Superlatives. A really interesting video creation site, Animoto can be used to create book trailers or to highlight a student club or collaborative lesson between the librarian and a history teacher. A teacher and I recently had history students create videos for each of the Constitutional amendments. Rollyo is a tool I have not used before but can see I will. I can use it to create custom search engines for the different topics my students research. Last but not least Zamzar is a site I use all the time, with all the different files that students bring in I am constantly converting something...