Sunday, July 19, 2009

Review and investigate the following wiki
http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/About+This+Wiki

This wiki was created for school library media specialists by Dr. Donna Baumbach and Dr. Judy Lee, University of Central Florida. The purpose is to provide information about some of the new web-based tools (Web 2.0) and how they can be used and are being used by school library media specialists and their students and teachers.

Direct your comments to two areas:
1) Did the information on this wiki help you learn about Web 2.o?
2) After investigating this wiki and with your experience with Web 2.0, give one example of how you might use a Web 2.0 application in your classroom.

23 comments:

  1. I do not see this website as being conducive to helping me as a teacher. It seems to be a hodge-podge of hyperlinks taking me all over the internet. The website itself is a nice idea, but poor in its execution. One problem is the site has links to ideas most people would have no idea about, such as a screencast. How many teachers actually know what a screencast is? I personally didn't until I clicked on the link.

    The best idea I can think of for use outside of school is using a blog and updating the blog with assignments on a daily basis. The only problem with that is the possibility of creating the "creep playground" in which a teacher starts to blend the sphere of being a teacher versus being a friend. I think this is an underlying problem of Web 2.0 in the classroom.

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  2. I liked the section of this wiki titled "finding more" where you could just click on what you want to do and it gives you a list of links to do those things. An interactive web 2.0 site would have to be specifically geared to elementary students for me to consider using it in the classroom. The most interesting sites I've seen in this format are for collaborating with other students in online projects. There are great projects that are similar to an online pen-pal, but with drawing projects that are sent back and forth between students. I think it would really be engaging for students to interact with artists their own age.

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  3. The wiki gave some great information about web 2.0. There are so many different applications that are included. It would take a lot of time to go through and look at every single application that is included.

    One of the things I think I would use the most in my classroom would be from the brainstorming areas. There looks to be a lot of free ways to get ideas down for students. I like the one that you can make on-line flash cards for students to help them study for a test, that looks awesome to use. I haven't signed up to see how easy it is to use but will be trying it soon.

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  4. I found this website to be helpful but a bit overwhelming. I really did not know what a wiki was so it was helpful in that respect. I was overwhelmed when I was viewing all the ways to use wikis.

    I feel that wikis could be used for creating a collaborative website with my grade level and subject peers. I would be helpful in communicating information with peers and possibly students. How to do that might need to be another class.

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  5. I too did not have a lot of experience or knowledge using wiki, and I did learn a lot about Web2.0 by looking through all the different options to click on.

    However, I do agree that when you have multiple links it can be difficult to keep a classroom on the right track. It seems as if it can be very easy to get lost in all the links provided. (To be honest, I got lost a few times).

    Another concern I had was about the ability for anyone to add information. When I was reading about Web2.0 I kept questioning wheather I was learning this information from a reputable person, or if it was someone without a lot of knowledge on Web2.0.

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  6. The information on this site opened my eyes to the hundreds of online tools that are available for free. There are only a certain amount of web tools that circulate around my school and I didn't even see these on the list! There are so many fun and educational tools that my students would marvel at. I am just shocked at the accessibility of these tools.

    There are actually a ton of ideas that I gleaned from this site, but two that really stood out to me were the openzines and any of the blog sites that were listed. I'm always looking for ways to interest the students in writing and creating their own magazine would be so fun for them! Also, I'm looking for ways to integrate blogs into my curriculum and the blog sites that they've listed seem easy for students to navigate and easy for me to control.

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  7. I learned about Web 2.0 applications in another class and mainly the applications Google offers, like Google Documents, Google Presentations, etc.
    I love the capabilities of collaboration with writing and the ease of share docs with all the people you have in your email list. This is useful for quick updates by a group of people without tracking them down and following up. The wiki was very complete and had lots of other applications I could learn to use. One was Google Chrome which I read because I have this app on my computer. I read the writeup about it and did not learn much. I find that Techie articles about new applications often do not explain what the program does first before reviewing it so the article is useless to a newbie. That is disappointing. In summary, I have to open Google Chrome and try it out myself to find out what it is so I wasted my time reading that particular writeup.
    I would use Google Docs in a classroom to have small groups collaborate on a story online. Also, I could quickly share during class a document for each student to complete and I would see the updates immediately.

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  8. I agree with the other posts that this site was difficult to navigate as it had too many links with descriptions that were limited or lacking. I did find that the link to 100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner provided a more organized looks at some of these links.

    While I would love to explore all of the options presented on this site and in the 100 Helpful Web Tools article, I focused my attention on a few programs that I know I would use in the fall including SurveyMonkey and MyNoteIT. SurveyMonkey is a really easy site to use when putting together an internet based survey. I could see my students using this frequently when we poll other students on current events or behaviors in history and sociology class. MyNoteIT is a program, similar to delicious, that allows students to store information so that they can access it from anywhere. MyNoteIT allows students to upload notes, organize materials for each class, record assignments, and keep a calendar. I anticipate that more and more students will want to take notes using word processors rather than pen and paper, and this would be a great program to help them stay organized. I also think this site would help during jigsaw group projects where several students are sharing information and notes with the rest of the group.

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  9. Like others previously stated, the site is overwhelming with lots of information, and would be difficult to follow for teachers and students alike. I feel that there is a lot of great info in it though. I liked the blogging tips, the brainstorming ideas, and the opportunity to network with other researchers. Along with Meredith, I feel that the Survey Monkey would be a great way to allow students to do surveys; thereby teaching them simple research skills!

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  10. I also think that the "DataLight" program in the wiki would be useful for me in the classroom, as it can be used by teachers and students to "summarize data, find relationships between fields, analyze distributions, and many more common statistical tasks".

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  11. I think that there is useful information on this site, but there are so many different links so navigation is a little difficult. I looked at some of the other web 2.0 sites and had no ideas that there were as many as there are. There is no doubt in mind that there are some very good sites that would work in the classroom, but you could get lost in all the links due to the difficulties in navigation. I have participated in a wiki and I do think that wiki's are a great thing to collaborate on. As well as easy to use.

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  12. I found the ladder chart that the ladies provided as an excellent way to explain involvement of all types of individuals in web 2.0 applications. The very simple and organized format is a solid format to learn about web 2.0.
    I currently have a website for my classroom that I created this summer. One way that I could get my students involved in web 2.0 applications is to have them view the comments that I posted on my class blog on the website and ask them to respond at least once a week on the blog. That would be a reasonable start in getting students more involved.

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  13. Today, it is hard to find a college student who is not familiar with wikipedia. Wikipedia was the first on my online wikis. Having navigated to many wikis accross the web, I would rate this wiki as being fair. As mentioned in previous posts, the information is very overwhelming. I understand that a wiki for web application would be very large, however, I would have preferred a simlier user interface. When searching several topics, I found the wiki pages to be information yet not as comprehensive as other wikis.

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  14. I didn't realize that there were so many wikis! I thought the application for creating flyers was great. I agree that it was a lot of information that I'd need more time to look over and experiement with. I would use the flyer portion of these websites to advertise class clubs and to aid students in their Real Estate project next year.

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  15. This site is a bookmark site for sure! It has so many great sites to go to there just isn't enough time to go look at them all right now. I did however really like the "Flowgram" site and could see myself using this a lot. There is a lot of info on it seems like every topic out there. As far as the wiki itself I am not as experienced with them so I don't have much of an opinion on the theory of it has to much info or it isn't organized because I am just getting my feet wet with wiki's. I agree with several of the posts though with how this site would be a great tool around the school or workplace.

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  16. There are a lot of different applications posted on this site. The link called 100 helpful web tools for every kind of learner did help to organize the sites to learning style. One thing that I could see myself using was the mind mapping tools. I am a very linear learner so that tends to be the way I teach. Some of the tools enable a teacher to teach in a way different from how they learn.

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  17. Wow! Tons of links to web sites and resources for 2.0 applications. I think this site will help teachers (me) to stay on top of what our students are doing. Students love to put photos on-line and to use social networking sights. I want to help my students to use these sites as good digital citizens. This site is loaded with information. The only trouble is to sort through all of it and figure out what is useful. I have already bookmarked it on delicious.

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  18. I am amazed at flexibility of the Web 2.0. The ability to create, manipulate, and manage information is exceptional. The wide variety of sites and programs make this one of the more exciting things I have reviewed this summer.

    I have already jumped into the authoring tools/web sites. Pachyderm seems to be the one I am working with the most. I am hoping to be able to create framework of assignments that require the students to apply technology knowledge, collaboration skills, and goal setting for this next school year. I think I will take the “face book” idea shared this summer and see what I can create off of it. I have always had some ideas of “things” I would like to produce, but always felt like the technology was out of reach or to expensive. This looks promising.

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  19. This wiki gave lots of information about Web 2.0 tools. I very much appreciated the list organized by "what do you want to do".

    I found many tools that I (and my students) would find useful, although not necessarily inside the classroom. Voicewalker, a tool to help you transcribe audio recordings, would be helpful for interpretation and assessing language comprehension. I was already familiar with Zotero, a reference management package. I had also read linguistic studies using Praat, but I didn't realize it was open source (and thus, free!). Praat is a phonetic program which is for doing voice analysis.

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  20. The wiki had good intentions however, it did not include enough information for a person that knows nothing about web 2.o to be able to understand and apply. It did however include basic information that gave a brief overview about what the application is. I liked all of the visuals that accompanied this wiki site. One that I found to be interesting was the ladded activity. I would use ths inmy classroom exactly as they did. The example that was given was where do you feel you fit on this ladder and why? I would have my students fill in where they are, and list characteristics that they feel they need in order to be higher on the ladder. I would also use this to organize information.

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  21. It is obvious that there is a lot of information on the internet. I like the idea of a wiki where people are willing to share their time and experiences to let others know what works for them. In a world where time is getting more valuable anything that helps us be efficient is a plus. A page like this wiki lets me know what’s available, but there is still a lot of information to sift through.

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  22. This website was very imformative about explaining web 2.0 and giving examples of all the different types of applications that are out there. I did not realize there are so many. I could really use several web 2.0 applications in my classroom. I could post a blog and have students respond, I could also have students work together on a group project using GoogleDocs. I am already thinking about how I can use as many of these applications this year as possible in the classroom.

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  23. I didn't know what wiki was actually. It is helpful, but it seems like there are a lot of applications which is very time consuming. I'm definately not the most computer literate person so I think it could be tough with the numerous links also.
    I do like google docs. We used it for our special topic report and found it to be very useful. I would love to use this in the classroom for some possible social studies assignments.

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