Web 2.0 Tools and Resources

Listed below are just a few of the amazing web 2.0 tools and resources I found on the Internet. It's absolutely amazing how much really is out there, and I've really begun to come to terms with the fact that I know less about it than I thought. I consider myself pretty "tech savvy" and I believe I understand the potential of web 2.0 tools and their impact on 21st century skills. Yet, at the same time, simply browsing the Internet for unique Web 2.0 tools brought me to the realization that there is way more out there than I was ever aware of. As you continue reading, you'll find the tools and resources I found to be of most interest as well as a brief description indicating its specific purpose. Feel free to use the links to learn more.

Route 21
This website is actually a resource based site for an educator to gain insight on 21st century skills. In today's educational system, we are aware of the current change towards critical thinking application, global literacy, problem solving, and innovation; however few educators truly understand what these skills are and how to implement their processes in a classroom setting. By visiting this website, one can find just this information. It's a nationwide "move" to push state educational systems into the 21st century, and the site does an excellent job in explaining why and how to do so. Correlations are made between core subjects with innovation literacy skills, career skills, and information technology skills. As can be seen from the website, there are currently just ten 21st century states, but Route 21 would like to promote the information towards making 21st century progress nationwide.

Go 2 Web 20
This website is actually a Web 2.0 tool database. Although access to individual web 2.0 tools cannot be achieved through the site, one can find information on just about every web 2.0 tool out there. More specifically, go2web20 provides visitors with "icons" listing NUMEROUS web 2.0 tools. By clicking on the "icon," information will appear describing what the tool is and why someone may use it. This is an excellent resource for anyone looking to incorporate web 2.0 tools but may be unfamiliar with what tools are out there. Instead of searching site upon site, all of the information is listed in one viewing area. Even if you think you know a great deal of web 2.0 tools, you should still check out this resource. I will guarantee there are tools you've never heard of before.

Live Journal
This web 2.o tool can actually be used in many ways. It can be a personal journal, a blog, or even a social networking tool. It's completely free to join, but paying members do receive premium services. Journal entries are featured in categories to make it easier to find topical interests. It can also be used by any and all ages (which brings me a little concern when it comes to implementing it in the classroom). I, as a first grade teacher, would fear my students reading material that may not be age-appropriate. I'm wondering if maybe there is a way to "privatize" the journal accounts so I knew who was reading and contributing to the entries. My students journal everyday, and sometimes they find it monotonous. It's also hard to find time to let each student read his/her journal. With this live feature, students could and respond to the journals at school or at home. It would also provide more interaction and cause students to reflect upon what they wrote.

Journeys
This website is somewhat like Google Earth. It allows the user to take real world trips in a virtual way. It uses a mashup with interactive maps, pictures, and some video to create a real life experience of a particular setting. In my opinion, this site would be great for any classroom use. The concept of field trips is brought to a new level allowing the students to take virtual field trips whenever and where ever. First graders are typically not critical thinkers or visualizers. They need a foundation to build knowledge instead of visualizing things on their own. This site would provide more than that for the students.

Tikatok
This web 2.0 tool is especially designed for children. The tool is really a community in itself for children to write stories and publish them. Students can type their own stories, illustrate them (with real or drawn pictures), and have them published by order. The best feature is that student work can remain on the site for others to view. This would be an incredible tool for my classroom because first graders LOVE writing stories. This site would help them feel like a real author. I could even purchase the published books for a classroom library or gifts for mom and dad.

Different Videocast

After having some trouble with the first video and its format, I'm going to try uploading another couple of videos. Feel free to check them out (if they work). I'll also try placing them in Podomatic, but I was told the file was too big to put the first one there. We'll see.....

The first video is of our school news from Halloween. It's called "Live From the Hive at 9:05" Usually third graders do the broadcast, but today was a special edition with teachers. You'll see that most of the teachers are "storybook characters" but two of us actually dressed up as our building principal and vice principal. Since you don't know the principals, it might not be as funny. The file is too big to place on here. I'll keep trying in podomatic!

This next video is of 4 kids in my classroom. They came up with the words and wrote the script to help the viewer learn tricks to remembering the different coins and how much they are worth. I thought they did pretty well.

My Videocast

Okay, I ran into some problems with the videocast. Mostly this was due to 2 reasons: (1) It's Thanksgiving break so I haven't been able to work with my students or at my school to produce a sufficient videocast and (2) I'm not allowed to download programs to my school laptop without administrative rights. I tried downloading Camtasia to do a screencast, but the download was impossible with administrative rights. I have plenty of videos I can add to podomatic; however, none of which are educational or have to do with school.

The other problem I ran into was that my digital camera automatically records video using .pme files. Most media devices do not recognize this format. I tried using a program called "Switch" to change the the format of the video; however, I was unsuccessful. It worked for audio files but not video files.

Regardless, I tried running a "mock" screencast with my digital camera. It's not great, but I plan on doing another video with the kids in school tomorrow. Stay tuned....
You can check out the first video on my podomatic sight by clicking here or using the "My Podcasts and Videos" link on the right hand side. I've also added it right here in the blog.

What did you do in school?

Posted on the K12 Online Conference site is a video presentation by Darren Kuropatwa entitled "What did you do in school today, yesterday, and 3 years ago?" If you get a chance to watch it, you certainly should. The conference talks about how students these days all have high tech "toys" but they aren't necessarily using them to record their daily learnings and educational work. Nearly all students these days have cell phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players, but most of these technological tools are used for idle and frivilous play and are banned from school settings.

This conference does an excellent job of suggesting WHY these tools should be considered educational gadgets for students to use as well as HOW to faciliate them in the classroom. Mr. Kuropatwa suggests ways in which students can use their "gadgets" to archive all aspects of their high school careers. We as teachers need to understand that these tools do not necessarily need to be "banned" from the educational setting, but instead should be used to promote learning and critical thinking. Instead of just handing these toys to kids and letting them figure out what to do with them, we should be teaching them proper ways to access and use information via these tools.

The conference really is quite interesting, and it ties together all of the topics we have talked about in our class discussions. It has great ideas for classrooms of all ages.

My Podcast Creations

In case you missed it, I added a link on the right side of my blog to my "Podomatic" podcast site. I linked my podcasts to a site for several reasons. (1) It's easy for parents to access the site by giving them the URL. (2) It helps me keep all of the podcasts organized. (3) Podomatic offers a direct recording feature to record your podcasts instead of recoding it in something like Audacity, saving it to your computer, and then uploading the mp3 file. I plan to use the Podomatic site daily in my classroom.

The first podcast (the one listed in Podomatic) is a student of mine explaining what our podcast will entail. Basically, I'm going to use it as a daily review for parents to find out what we did in class that day. In first grade, it's common for students to say "nothing" when asked what they did in school. By using podcasts, my students are excited to teach their parents how to log on and listen to a student telling what we did. Please disregard all of the "forest themed" comments! My classroom is set up like a forest complete with tents, Moose-matical terms, Literacy Lake, Phonics Fir, etc. So, our "Flashback Frenzy" is also themed around those features. The podcast you'll hear was brought to you by Rex the Racoon! Feel free to listen by clicking on "My Podcasts" underneath my picture or click here if it's easier!

My Podcast Subscriptions

Okay, well I think I've gone a little podcast crazy here in the last couple of days. Using both itunes and Internet searches, I've found quite a few podcasts that I'm now subscribing to. Of the 12 I'm following in my RSS aggregator, about half of them are school/classroom use and the other half are my own personal interests. I think I can safely say after this week.....I'm addicted! Below are my three favorite subscriptions with a description of what they are and how I may use them in the classroom (if applicable)

• Storynory Podcast This podcast is for anyone who loves children's stories. Each podcast provides the listeners with a new story for their listening pleasure. This would be a great podcast for assessing and/or building student comprehension. In first grade, it's often hard to assess whether the students are not comprehending a story because they really can't read the words or if they are truly not comprehending what they are reading. This podcast would be great because the stories are read to them. I could easily make a short quiz about each story for a student to complete after listening. OR....this podcast also provides the words to the story. I could print out the words beforehand, have the student read the story, answer the questions, and then listen to the story to HEAR exactly what they misinterpretted when reading. The possibilies are truly endless, and the site does a great job of using all types of story genres.
• WillowWeb This podcast is created for kids by kids. It's from a school in Nebraska called Willowdale. The kids (from all grade levels) take turns broadcasting what they are learning about, but they do it in a fun and innovative way. It's great to listen to because the kids actually TEACH what they have learned via the "radio show." So, I could easily use it in my classroom for the students to learn interesting facts as well as learning how to speak when making our own podcasts. It's even great for me because I can get ideas on what to put in a podcast with my own students. Check it out!
• Get Lost This is for anyone who loves the ABC show "LOST." It's not the feed to the actual show podcast. Instead it's a podcast for episode discussions, theories, and hidden meanings behind the ever-thickening plot of the island and its crash survivors. If you're a show watcher...you know what I'm talking about.
• Jon and Kate Plus Eight is also a must, but it's more of a vodcast.

Is Teaching Marketing to Kids?

I was catching up on my RSS subscriptions today, and I came across a blog by Clarence Fisher from Remote Access entitled "Is Teaching Marketing to Kids?" At first, I didn't quite understand what Fisher was getting at, but then I realized he was using technology related analogies to decipher what our teaching really entails. In the post, Fisher questions his fellow readers about how they are reaching their students' wants and needs. In a sense, teaching is like marketing.....the good kind of marketing. Great marketing is when a company can "recommend things that you might like based on your history with them, are helpful and there when you need them, back up a product with service and stay out of the way when you don't need them, and know that if they are doing a good enough job creating a product or a service that is high quality and useful, you will come back."So, Fisher questions...Isn't that what we do with our students? Are we sitting down and analyzing our students' wants and needs? Do we customize instruction to meet their personal experiences?

In my opinion, the answer should be YES. After all, isn't that what we call differentiated instruction? Without authentic, personal attachments to the content, students get lost in the material. And, as Fisher compares...."we might just be spamming the kids with useless information that they will delete as 'junk' later." (Just as we do with spam emails) In a sense, teaching is exactly like marketing. However, it's the type of marketing everyone is looking for....personalized, reliable, and efficient.

Are you marketing for your kids? If so, how do you "market" in your classroom?
Comments please....