Tag Archives: web2.0intheclassroom

Sifting Through The Sea pt. 2: More Edtech that Works

Posted on by under 21st century learning, Edtech, inspiration, Wikis

images-1Here are some free web 2.0 tools I’ve discovered or just gotten more proficient with because of our 23 things class.

1.Bubbl.us– is a cool concept mapping tool that allows you to brainstorm, visually outline ideas, and has some easy to use shortcuts that make the processes simple. I have used Inspiration with visual students in the past, but you have to pay, and bubbl.us is free. I will definitely turn my kids onto this tool especially when we begin the research project this fall.
2. Haiku Deck– A wonderful presentation creation app that is free and visually beautiful. I have seen some really terrific presentations from ISTE and on twitter. This is a tool I will definitely use this year and teach my students.
3. Timetoast- Since xtimeline no longer seems to work well, perhaps we will use timetoast this year instead. Although you cannot create collaborative timelines, students can create individual timelines and then put them on our class blog. The interface is really easy to use and I can see the utility of this tool for group and individual projects in the upcoming year.
4. Voicethread– A great tool that allows you to record voice comments to videos, pictures or documents. There are so many possibilities for this tool. You could use it to give feedback to students, have them give feedback to each other, or create a narrative for a picture or video. The possibilities are endless and this is the tool I am probably most exited about using this year. I think my ESL students will love using it to practice their spoken English and interact with each other. I think we may use it this year with our WPA poster project in American Studies.
5. Weebly– Our school has used Weebly in several classes, and this year we will go back to having students create a website based on an artifact from Special Collections at the University of Virginia. We did this two years ago and it went really well, but we had to rely on google sites and they just aren’t as slick as what students can create with Weebly. I am also going to have my ESL History students creating sites based on famous Supreme Court cases as a way to introduce them to the constitution and the Judicial Branch of government.

Great Places to Find More Tools:

Dirt– “This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively.  Whether you need software to help you manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts, Digital Research Tools will help you find what you’re looking for. We provide a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools in which we not only describe the tool’s features, but also explore how it might be employed most effectively by researchers.”

Webtools4utouse Wiki – A great site with a terrific layout that provides you with great tools to do everything from screen casting to pod casting, web sharing, and curating. I will be spending a great deal of time exploring this site in the coming weeks.

Teaching in a 2.0 World: Why Tech Matters, but not as much as some would make us believe.

Posted on by under 21st century learning, amstuds, digital texts, Edtech, humanities, Uncategorized, web2.0

Web-2.0-word-cloud

I am currently taking an online class offered by k12learning20 based on the 23 things program to introduce teachers to different Web 2.0 resources. Although I am already fairly fluent in many of these tools, I am very much looking forward to expanding my skill base. Our Thing 3 assignment requires us to complete a blog post on the meaning of teaching in a Web 2.0 world which is fortuitous because the questions presented have been bouncing around in my brain for a while now. This post is just the first part of what I am thinking of as a series examining my experience teaching in a web 2.0 world and the continuing relevance of the traditional tools of teachers.

First of all, I believe in technology and I believe that every teacher has not only the opportunity, but more the obligation to become fluent in the latest tools of the trade. My teaching has improved as a result of the resources and ideas I have gotten from twitter chats, my experience at edcamprva, and other professional development opportunities. Our American Studies class is very techie, and so is pretty much every class I teach. We use a variety of web 2.0 tools and our students have benefited from our increased knowledge.

All that said, I have to say that I think we are overestimating the impact of web 2.0 tools. Sure they are great and readily available, many for free even, but a good tool will never replace a good teacher and too much of the language bouncing around the educational world seems to suggest otherwise. I also worry about how quickly the standby tools of the trade i.e. lecture or even the idea of the teacher as the expert are so quickly dismissed as  20th or 19th century ideas that are some how no longer relevant in today’s 21st century world.  I disagree. I think that every teacher has a toolbox of things they do well some are cutting edge and some are older than any of us. The goal of education especially in the humanities classroom is to teach students to think critically, develop a level of cultural literacy, and frankly be able to retell the stories/histories that make up our curriculum and give each story their own slant. Web 2.0 tools definitely can help with that process, but so can great lectures, in depth reading, and other tools that have been around centuries. Furthermore, I refuse to believe that we live in a world where knowledge no longer matters.

I also believe that we have an obligation to our students to be fluent in their world and their world is certainly increasingly a web 2.0 world full of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr to just name a few. We, as teachers and really as people sharing the world with the generation of digital natives, should also understand and be able to participate in this world.

So what is the meaning of web 2.0 in the world of education? My answer: The tools available to us in the Web 2.0 world are what we make of them. It is  a world we need to own and share with our students, but not rely on to the exclusivity of all the other tools in the box. I’ll be writing on much of this in more detail in the coming weeks.

Sifting through the Sea: Edtech that Works

Posted on by under amstuds, Edtech, web2.0

Listed below in absolutely no order of preference are web tools and applications we’ve used successfully in our class room this year.

1. Socrative– I’m pretty new to using this tool, but it has been a great addition. We’ve used it to get feedback from students about what they’ve learned from readings, lectures, and films. It has also helped us to make the  connections between the different lessons we teach during our double period class clearer to our students. The ability to give auto-graded quizzes which output into a spread sheet is a definite bonus. Students can use their phones, tablets or computers which is nice in a class where not everyone has a laptop.

2. WordPress– We created a class blog this year stabamstud.com. Students have posted information on their research paper sources, shared responses to the 2012 election, and we have also used it to share information with them. We will probably use it more next year when we plan to have students blog about all of their sources instead of handing in an annotated bibliography.

3. Livebinder– This site which allows you to create online binders to store and share material has been a godsend for us. Since I teach with a team, we have used this to share resources with each other and have shared binders with students. Here is a binder we created for our opening unit:http://www.livebinders.com/play/play/453144

4. Google Aps– As you can see from my post about using google docs to give students feedback about thier writing, we really value this platform. It makes it easy for our team to collaborate when making tests, creating lesson plans, and writing assignments. We have also used google forms to create surveys for our class and to get feedback via anonymous course evaluations.

5. Learnist– This resource was one of the best discoveries I’ve made recently on twitter.  It is much like Pinterest, but easier to navigate and with an audience that seems to involve mainly educators. It is so easy to make boards and there are already great resources on the site.  It is incredibly easy and user friendly. Here is one board I made for our upcoming unit on the Great Depression and this one on tech tools we use.

7. Prezi– Although I have to say I have not yet mastered the art of making great Prezi’s, this is a fantastic tool and one of my teammates is incredibly proficient. We have used Prezi for many different presentations and it is incredibly useful. I particularly like the ability to imbed all different kinds of media. There are also some great ready made prezis available through the search function. Here is one I am working on right now for the day we go back to school. I will be talking with the kids about the historical forces that set the stage for the Harlem Renaissance and some of the key artists/intellectuals involved. Here is one that I used when talking with students about First Wave Feminism

8. Mural.ly– This is another recent discovery. A bit like Prezi, I find it slightly easier to navigate. Like Prezi, it enables you to embed a variety of different types of media. Here is one we just started working on for the same unit on the 1930’s.

9. Dropbox– A great way to share and save documents. We also used shared folders to transfer material from one teacher to another.

10. Itunes U- We have used a variety of the resources both as ways to deliver content to our students either in class or for homework. We have also used some of the courses especially Berkley Professor Michael Cohen’s American Studies Course.