Helene M Web 2.0

Administrators and teachers must keep up with the cutting edge of technology. It is important for them to encourage teachers to learn, discover and experiment with these new 21st century tools. Web 2.0 encourages collaboration, integration and sharing of information. It is important for us to share this with our students and engage them in active learning. This will show them how to be effective and responsible users of technology now and in their future.

I really enjoyed all  of the tools shared with us during this class. Although it was a whirlwind, I look forward to revisiting some of these tools at my leisure. The two tools that I will be using in the near future are Flickr and Blabberize. Flickr and Creative Commons are very important when using images to enhance a project. We are constantly worrying about copyright laws and it will be refreshing to send children to a site that allows the use of photos for educational purposes without worrying. Blabberize is another site that can be used as an assessment tool. My first graders will soon be studying insects, spiders and mammals, and after some simple research using Encyclopedia Britannica for kids, each child will create their own blabber of the animal that they researched. It will be a fun culmination of this unit.

In all, I have learned a tremendous amount about Web 2.0 tools, and feel confident, now as a Classroom 2.0 member that I will keep up with the latest and greatest in technology. Thanks for having me!

Classroom 2.0 is fantastic. It took me about 2 days to look around this fabulous site with loads of ideas and possibilities for my technology classroom. I joined and have been in contact with a teacher who wanted ideas about an interactive technology project on inventors and inventions with her 6th grade class. I did something like this last year with my fourth grade class, using brainpop to research different inventors and inventions and creating vodcasts to share the information with all of the classmates. Classroom 2.0 is an awesome place, an online network, for educators interested in sharing, collaborating, finding and using Web 2.0 tools in their classroom. This is one of the best finds of this class for me. I have found a few ideas which I will research more about and implement with my students in the New Year. Really great, thanks!!

Google Docs is a great way to share and collaborate on work. As I have shared with you,  I have created a spreadsheet to coordinate driver’s for my son’s basketball games. Similarly, it can be used for extensive writing projects that have different drafts due. It can be edited by the student and teacher alike and all of the information is in real time and shared on one document over and over without creating so many copies of the same document. Google Docs is also a great way for groups to work on a project together, making changes, adding and editing each others work without sending e-mails of the document back and forth. When taking a survey of many students, one spreadsheet can be used, where everyone can add their information to one document and the teacher can view. You just have to make sure that when you make changes you are working on your own information and not to mess up, add or delete anyone else’s information. We have started sharing documents with links on people from the Revolutionary War with our fifth grade students, and other teachers who have had the document have been able to add other internet links as they come across them. This is a great tool that is being used with 5th grade and up and we hope to spread this information to fourth grade as well when the next project warrants it.

Working with Pageflakes was fun because it allows you to customize a page exactly to your liking. Now, like IGoogle, I’d like to figure out how to set it as my home page, so everything that I need will be at my fingertips. I added different RSS feeds to follow topics on Eductional Technology as well as World News. I added a sticky notes area, calculator, calendar, Atlanta weather, Atlanta movies and showtimes as well as my Delicious site so I can share my bookmarks with others. I also added the wikipedia browser and flickr browser. I will talk to my technology department to see if we can setup a page on pageflakes that will be beneficial for our students and teachers at the Epstein School. Very neat tool!! Thanks!! One last question… Do you think this will give my computer a virus if I add it as my home page?? My husband was a little skeptical…

I found a very interesting article while browsing my Google Reader entitled Teach from Home from Tech Learning. A teacher who was unable to make it to school becuse his daughter was sick, took advantage of Distance Learning and using ichat, communicted with his substitute and his students virtually. He was able to teach the lesson by taking over the main computer in his classroom and virtually controlling the computer and delivering the lesson as usual. His students thought it was so cool and were mesmerized, they were even able to converse back and forth with him. As stated in the article by Clayton Christensen, “By 2019 50% of high school classes will be taught online”. The question is however…Will the students be prepared for this?? Will the teachers be prepared for this?? Will schools have the infrastructure to support this?? Only time will tell, this is the wave of the future!!

Looking through Teacher Tube and YouTube, I found a lot of videos that can be used to enhance teaching. I found a lot of math how tos that can really give assistance to a child who is having trouble with a specific concept, especially at home to review, it’s like having your own personal tutor. The video I found is a great way for my third grade students to learn their states and capitals in a fun sing song way. Similar to podcasting, I think that producing a video can be used as an assessment of knowledge learned. It’s a great way for students to showcase their work and have others learn from them. I will continue to use Brain Pop and United Streaming to introduce or enhance my lessons, but I will also take a closer look at Teacher Tube and You Tube.

I enjoyed looking through the different podcasts created by students, for students from both Willow Web Elementary and Jamestown Elementary. I started podcasting with my students last year and adapted Tony Vincents podcasting templates to suit the needs of my kids. Before we started, I also showed (or should I say, had them listen to) some sample podcasts of other students. Not only was the content important, but the show needed to be exciting to keep the listeners attention, the music had to be suitable and the recording voices needed to be clear and loud.  We realized that the preparation was 90%! Once we were prepared, the recording was a piece of cake. Anyway, our third grade Festival of Lights podcast was a success!! Students took on different roles, from gathering information about their holiday to writing it up, but not only including the facts, but presenting it in such a way as to engage the listener. The readers practiced and practiced, reading out loud and with expression to their friends before recording day. We even had hosts introducing each section. I have also created vodcasts, podcasts with images, with my students, grade K-5. My kindergarteners created an ABC podcast. They took pictures all around the school beginning with all of the letters of the alphabet, we put the pictures in alphabetical order and then created a script to go along with it. Each child was responsible for a letter or 2, we practiced reading the script and then recorded. It was a tremendous process that ended with a beautiful outcome. The beauty was, the students learned how to use digital cameras and took pictures all around the school, we put all of the pictures in alphabetical order,laying the hard copies around the perimeter of the computer lab and then 1 picture at a time, came up with a script. We broke up the script and each child practiced reading what they came up with, so that developed reading fluency. It really was a great project and without even knowing it  the students mastered to many skills! We have also created other podcasts including: All Around The Epstein School, introducing newcomers to our school; People We are Thankful for at the Epstein School (which we’re working on now)for Thanksgiving, and podcasts about different inventions that students researched just to name a few. We will definitely continue podcasting at The Epstein School!

Never in a million years would I think that people would categorize their books in a public forum…This is Brilliant!! Not only can people categorize their books and keep track of what they read, but they can search for genres of their liking and meet people who have the same interests. It’s like a giant book club! I like how you can search the Zeitgeist for the Author cloud or the tag cloud and then keep clicking on the related tags to narrow your search. I will have my daughter take a look at this to find books in the same Genre as Harry Potty or the Twilight Series. Thanks!!

This social bookmarking came at just the right time for me!! I just attended the Georgia Educational Tech Conference and I have so much information and websites to share with my colleagues. I sat down with my pad of information and juicy new Web 2.0 tools and started revisiting them and bookmarking them using Delicious. I spent 2 hours going through about 1/3 of the information that I got, but at least I have a place to start and a place to continue adding websites to. Tagging is fun and easy and I can’t wait to share my Delicious sites!!

Browsing through my Google Reader I found some interesting activities about food choices, the food pyramid and creating a balanced meal. This was found in my RSS feed from Teaching Pre-K to 8. I know this unit is coming up with my first graders and I would like to share some of these ideas including the Dole Encyclopedia of Fruits and Vegetables with my teachers.