Web 2.0

The past 10 weeks have been so exciting for me. It is one thing to sign up for a one day training class and go and cram in 7 hours what needs to be explored for 7 weeks. It’s another to be able to log into a web portal and explore the teaching modules 24/7. I love the latter option so much better. I plan to take all I have learned from this class and break it down into sections for training our teachers. I will offer training days where the teachers will come to the Media Center during their planning periods and explore the Web 2.0 tools, and food will be available as an incentive to attend these training days!

Classroom 2.0 and Ning in Education were both new sites for me. I enjoyed looking through the sites and gathered some great information to use and share. People were sharing information about wireless remote and digital camera advice, Google Wave reviews/raves, budget cut news/woes, blogging vs. webpages for teachers, and whether or not cell phones should be used in school or not. These were the topics I found interesting on Classroom 2.0, and this was just after browsing for about an hour. Again, time flies when the topics are interesting!

I also enjoyed browsing on Ning, and found a GREAT tutorial on how to make quizzes with Google Docs:

http://www.quiz-creator.com/blog/2009/09/making-online-quiz-with-google-docs-1-creating-quizzes/#110

It is in 3 parts, and I plan to share this with the teachers who are already loving Google tools and in need of online quiz making resources.

I do not have a Facebook or MySpace account, but I did sign up for and have a Google Wave account. It is my understanding that Google Wave is like Facebook on steroids…real time talk and collaborative sharing/editing capabilities. I think Google Wave may pull us all in before it is over to the social networking arena. I am fearful of the effects social networking is having on our students. I have personally witnessed high school girls who are “hooked” on instant messaging, and they will go out of their way to get to the library to get their IM fix via their email accounts. I could talk all day about my concerns because I am seeing first-hand how addictive, and often dangerous the social networking is for our students. Our school blocks MySpace and Facebook, but currently, Google Wave is open as well as all the instant messaging tools within most email programs.  We have a monitoring system in the Media Center that allows us to view all student workstations activities.  We often redirect student activities online by sending messages to them via the monitoring system.

I feel many parents hand their children cell phones, iPods with Internet access, and laptops without discussing important safety issues with them. They are handed adult tools and not given usage advise on them. It is our job as educators to help students understand the great ways we can use social networking as well as the dangers.

Yes, there is probably a place in the classroom for collaborative use of social networking sites, but they must be carefully managed. We can only filter and monitor so much. We must educate them on proper use before turning them loose with such a tool for collaborative group work. Currently our teachers are not using social networking sites with students as a learning tool. Google Wave may change that, or it may become blocked by our network as well.

Vicki Davis shared her insight on becoming disconnected on occasion when trying to connect everyone around us using technology. We spend so much time taking care of other’s connections that we often become disconnected with our connections. I guess it is much like the carpenter’s wife…the carpenter makes sure everyone else has beautiful cabinets while his own cabinets at home could use a face lift.

I have enjoyed reading Vicki’s feeds. She is full of energy and excitement about technology in education. It looks like she has started an online community of teachers who are running and exercising for personal health…her latest post.

The link below is about the disconnection that might happen.

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2009/12/globally-connected-personally.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+CoolCatTeacherBlog+(Cool+Cat+Teacher+Blog)&utm_content=Google+Reader

Setting up my Pageflakes page was much like setting up an iGoogle page. I did have issues connecting the K-12 Learning 2.0 template. Our network security kept telling me that spyware was found on the site, and it prohibited me from accessing it. I was almost afraid to try it on my computer at home after this error message came up on several different computers at school.

Teachers can set up a Pageflake to share with their students, students can use Pageflakes to collaborate with their group members. The world readable and team writable options make for a great online collaborative tool for group projects. A team of students in AP Environmental science can set up a Pageflakes page to share what they are researching about environmental issues and endangered species. The students in senior English can create a Pageflake to share what they are learning about an author and his/her life and works.  They can incorporate their RSS feed of their class podcasts right on the Pageflake site as well as the pictures they take during their class field trips via Picasa. Students in the Spanish class can link to translation tools and TeacherTube where their own Spanish videos are posted.

Love this tool!

Google Docs is a wonderful tool for collaboration between students and teachers. Our teachers are using Google Docs to publish class assignments and rubrics for class projects so students have ready access to assignments. One of our English teachers is using Docs to promote group work and peer editing of writing assignments. The students share their documents with the teacher and other students in their group for editing and revising purposes. The teacher can see who has modified the document. After using Docs to share information with the students, many teachers have commented on the ease of use and how wonderful it is to be able to access the files 24/7.

For the future I can see our school using Docs to post school council meeting agendas and minutes as well as the leadership team and staff development agendas/notes being shared and revised using this collaborative tool.

Students will also be able to upload their PowerPoint presentations to their Docs and present via Docs instead of transferring files using a jump drive or shared network that often is difficult to connect to.

The possible uses seem endless, and our students and teachers are eager to use this tool.

I’ve used YouTube for personal searches in the past, but I enjoyed looking at the academic side of YouTube. I used “search engines” as my search on YouTube and TeacherTube and was amazed at all the videos available. It was especially interesting to see how many young adults have created some really great “how-to” videos on navigating search engines and cool tools available. Showing students some student-made how-to videos can inspire them to create one on their own as a class assignment. By trying out advanced features of common search engines, the students can learn more about effective searches online. They can then use the computers we have here at school to put together short video presentations to post to TeacherTube to be shared with the class or embedded on the school website.

The video below was found on TeacherTube. It is a great example of how students might present what they have learned.

Book Review Podcast. Vocaroo would not record for me, so I used GarageBand to record. My knowledge of GarageBand settings is minimal, and the audio sounds like I’m talking in a tunnel. It may be my mic I recorded on also. I’m going to test with at different mic and enlist some help from a few students who are very familiar with Garageband. Maybe the outcome in audio quality will be better…but here it is.

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Podcasting in Education is an exciting topic, one I will have to incorporate into the programs for our Media Center. We have one teacher who shows his students how to create podcasts using the iMac computer applications. The students love the process of recording their voices, adding music, and saving their podcast to their in-house website they create. As for teachers creating podcasts for instruction, I do not see it taking place…yet.

I subscribed to several podcasts:
NPR’s education podcast and book review podcast both are very interesting and offer useful information related to educational topics and book reviews. I loved the book reviews, and want to start a book review podcast of my own to highlight the Georgia Peach Nominee books for the year. I could have links to these podcasts from the Media Center webpage.
I also subscribed to the New York Times book review podcasts…these “reviews” are on books for adults.

Apple’s Podcasting in Education- HowStuffWorks is a cool place to visit…it is in the Guest Content Channels section.

I want to share the PBS Podcasts with the teachers. There are so many great podcasts out there that can enhance the curriculum in all subject areas. Again, I do believe our teachers are so busy teaching that most don’t venture out to explore what podcasting has to offer. It is my goal to offer training here at school to introduce the teachers to podcasting and what it can do for them and their students.

LibraryThing is a site I ran into earlier in my explorations for this class. It is a great tool for storing/rating my favorite books, reading other’s reviews of books, and discovering new titles I haven’t read yet. The members of our book club can set up individual accounts and rate/review/read all about their favorite titles. We can also communicate with each other the titles we are reading via this site.

The Groups section on LibraryThing is great! There is even one for librarians that has many posts of interest. Zeitgeist is impressive with its top books, most reviewed titles, authors who LibraryThing, and links to top author lists. A book lover’s dream!

Wow! I’m hooked.

Delicious.com was introduced to me about a year ago, but I never took the time to create and account and use it. I have enjoyed using delicious.com and exploring the popular bookmarks as well as searching for sites. I will import my bookmarks from my desktops at home and work…maybe I can get my links organized now since they are currently a big long list with no organization by subject.  This is a great way for our teachers to share their favorite sites. The English teachers will love this tool if they haven’t already discovered it on their own.

The link to my delicious account is:  delicious.com/amyharrison