Week 6: Thing 13

I think I could spend hours looking at all the bookmarked sites via Del.icio.us I looked at the cooltoolsforschools site which had so many great links to neat tools- I was interested in the writing tools and there were many that I would like to use with my elementary students for their projects. It is nice when people who have the time and inclination can do all the groundwork to put these sites in one easy to reach place for the rest of us to access. I'm much more likely to try some of these sites out when I don't have to dig around for them- they are already tried and true.

Web 2.0 Chapters 7 & 8

I found Chapter 7 on Online Safety and Security for the most part review. I didn't know about the Creative Commons License though. I'm guessing more people will make use of the Creative Commons License- it seems very user friendly and common sense like. I also appreciated getting the websites www.getnetwise.org and www.myspace.com/safetytips/ these will be useful places to send parents who want more information on internet safety. After teaching I-Safe over the years I found the Cyber Awareness Survey to be a bit too simple. The administrative restrictions were a bit daunting but on closer scrutiny I decided that there really wasn't anything unreasonable asked of the teacher.

In Chapter 8 on Systemic Issues, most of the web 2.0 uses for Learning Disabled, English Second Language and other special needs students I found to be worthwhile and even exciting. I can see how having some of these tools can make a big difference in reaching these wide ranging needs. The point about equal access is very valid and I would add the argument that you are probably saving money by providing technological tools which could bring these learners up to a point where they can be in a regular classroom environment and hence save money on teacher assistants and specialists. I wasn't impressed with the assessment part of this chapter although that is probably because most assessment done at my school is project based so none of the ideas mentioned in this chapter seemed that progressive.

Web 2.0 Chapters 1 and 4

The main point I gleaned from the first chapter of web 2.0 New Tools, New Schools was that technology needs to be harnessed to help students learn thinking and analytical skills. One of the reservations I have had about technology is that it isn't accessible enough to elementary students and there always seems to be hardware/software glitches that interfere with the learning. If we are truly moving beyond the "bells and whistles" of cool tech. stuff into using the technology to collaborate and put together higher level projects rather than the cut/paste Wikopedia reports that is a good thing- I do think it is hard for teachers to embrace technology when there isn't enough time for them personally to explore these tech tools. Most of us have a hard time taking the leap of faith that's needed to embrace new technology.



In Chapter 4 (my chapter of choice) I looked at the types of things model school were doing with collaborative and project based learning. I was intrigued with the idea that blogs give the "quiet" students a better opportunity to contribute to class discussions. Most of these model schools have a professional development component which is critical to moving forward. I liked the concept discussed in this chapter that there needs to be a balance between technology and pedogogy. I think one of the most exciting applications of technology is the similations that are available to highschool science classes- my son who is in AP Physics is able to similate very complicated experiments online which his school would never have the resources to do otherwise. One thing we can't lose sight of is making sure that students have the foundation skills i.e. keyboarding and search strategies . Elementary school should provide this so that students can build on that background once they get to middle school.

Week #3 Thing 12 Voice Threads

At first glance I didn't think I would be very interested in this tool. After exploring a bit and trying both the micophone comments and the pen on picture I could see many ways to incorporate voice threads with library projects. I went on a very simple one with a map of the world that a sixth grader posted. She asked anyone to point out where they live and say something about their home- it's amazing how many people from all around the world joined in. I found this site pretty easy to navigate... probably because the introduction video was very easy to follow.

Week 8- Thing 19

I'm going a bit out of order but since I had already looked a bit at Librarything (thing 11) I decided to go ahead and do the activities for thing 19. I decided to catalog a list of books I had purchased for my daughter who is finishing up her degree in music education. I tagged the books and set up a list for her. What I thought was neat about the tags was being able to look at other tags for these books and get ideas for books from what others were selecting on their lists. I plan to have my daughter look through these other recommended books for additional ideas to add to her collection. I like the feature that shows the book cover and I noticed that in some of the comments teaching ideas were shared- I imagine she'll find this very useful.

Week 5- Thing 11

I explored the award winning site "Library Thing" http://www.librarything.com I think Library Thing would be useful to use as a personal catalog of books read and as a way other than Amazon to get book reviews from other readers. The couple of book reviews I did read seemed well thought out. I like that this site wasn't commercial. One school application would be to use this site with a class when doing a genre review and have students reflect via the blog on the book they read and get recommendations for other books of a similar type.

Thing #10 Online Image Generators

I used the Comic Strip Generator to create this comic. It was fun and easy. I tried again with a different Snoopy cartoon but it wanted to charge me for it- it took me to PayPal. I guess we have to be aware that these are here but not always "free".

http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/