This blog post,
Web 2.0 Tools that Will Instantly Impact Your Classroom is an excellent resource for any teacher looking to expand his or her toolbox. Some on the list you will recognize, but have not tried, and maybe the descriptions will entice you to do so now. Others you might not have heard of, but the descriptions will help you decide if they are worth investigating for your teaching or professional needs. The site is worth bookmarking, assuming you use a bookmarking site like Diigo, one of the tools actually mentioned in the blog. Explore the link, and get back to this blog to let us know your findings and what you plan to research and what you would recommend to others. The blog,
Fishing for Technology looks like a good one to remember and bookmark for other blog postings as well.
Image from: http://fishingforedtech.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/web-2-0-tools-that-will-instantly-impact-your-classroom/
7 comments:
What a great list of resources! The list validates some of the tools I already use like Prezi, Diigo, and SurveyMonkey, and others caught my attention to explore further. I really like the concept of Wallwisher, and it would work well for social networking-like communication between characters in a novel or similar activities. Cloud saving tools seem to be more popular recently. I would like to introduce my students next year to sites like diigo, livebinder, or studyblue. Education and business are rapidly moving toward the paperless trend, and these sites will be essential for success and organization in a paperless society.
Wow! This is a great list of tools that I've both have and not have experienced! This is a great website to bookmark to be able to have a description with the products. One that caught my eye that I'm interested in, is the "todaysmeet," which can be used as a backchannel to have class discussions with. Just like one of the reasons I want to have a backchannel, the site suggests the same reason for its use to help provide an outlet for any shy students.
The list goes on and I don't know if I will be able to try them all out by the end of the year, but I know I will be missing out if I don't. There is so much potential to help myself as an educator and also my students. I wish there was 25% of these things available for my own k-12 schooling and it would have improved my schooling drastically. Now knowing about these tools, I feel obligated to tell other teachers and also my (future) students.
As there are a lot of tools, the website provides a great way to provide the uses, so it will narrow down the tools you will want to try, but I believe they all will be beneficial!
Wow, that is an interesting list! Now that school is just about done I'll soon have time to poke around and investigate the tools more thoroughly. I did look at Meegenius. It is similar to the One More Story website I reviewed for our first assignment. This site didn't have a big selection of books, but the ones that they did have were narrated nicely. Plus, the site is free!
MessageHop looked cute, too. I actually tried it quickly and found it very easy to use. I got the impression from the description of the site that you could do numerous pages, but I couldn't figure out how to do more than one page.I'll try it again.
This summer will be a great time to explore some of the other tools. I can't help but notice some of the awesome tools that could be used with older students. They look like they'd be such fun, motivating tools.
These are all great tools for the classroom. Some of the tools which I think would be the tools I would be most likely to use are Quizlet, Pollmo, Diigo, Study Blue, and Ning. I know of teacher that use Quizlet in my school, and the students are constantly studying off of it. I think that both Pollmo and Diigo give students great resources for the students to use in the classroom. Study Blue is a tool which I had when I was in school. I think having lecture notes and flashcards online is a great way to allow students to access important classroom materials. Even though it wasn't on the list I would also try to use a Ning in my classroom, I think it is great tool to post blogs, hold forums, and post videos. I have grown attached to the Ning over the past few weeks, and would want to incorporate it in my classroom.
I was familiar with some of these tools already, but there were several others that I would like to explore more carefully for next year. I found the Join Me application interesting. Not only can you use it to help a student out, but could have all your students linked to it right in the beginning of class so you can monitor what they are doing and their progress. I also liked the MeeGenius and the LoudLit. I am definitely going to check these websites out to see if they have any of the books I read in my class that a struggling reader might be able to access on the internet to help them read along with. I would also like to start using my Diigo account to bookmark these sites for future reference.
I agree that this is a particularly helpful list of classroom web 2.0 tools because of the descriptions and suggested uses for educators. I am familiar with using some of these tools already, including Diigo and SurveyMonkey, but there are a few more that I know I'll have to make time to explore over the summer. I'm interested in VidKeep, as we all know that sinking feeling when you find a last minute video on YoutTube that perfectly fits the curriculum or lesson you are teaching, but then find it is blocked by your district.
I also think Jing would be a great tool to use to record mini tutorials of various websites, online applications, projects, and web tools for students. By saving a mini tutorial video showcasing the ease of use of a site in conjunction with a voice over narration, students could review how to navigate various sites and tools indpendently, thus cutting down on the waiting time for a teacher to make her way over and re-explain.
What a great comprehensive list with quick "snapshot" descriptions! I will definitely be passing this link onto my co-workers! While many of the tools, as previously mentioned, we have before familiar with throughout this course, there were many others I had never heard of! I thought the quizlet and wordmag sites would be great for vocab review. We have a really big push in our school for using Marzano's vocab strategies and we are always told we're not doing the last step- the games! So these websites would be great for that! I also thought that "Loudit" would be great to help modify and accommodate students' needs when reading. I am very excited to further explore this list and pass it on!
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