Web 2.0 - Story Something

Story Something is a mobile and web platform for personalized and customized children's stories providing busy, time deprived parents with impressionable, relevant, and enjoyable ways to connect with their children through storytelling. If I were an elementary school teacher I would encourage all of my parents to sign up for this tool. Not only would it provide active involvemnt in their childs learning, but it will reinforce the reading strategies that are taught in my class. Again I have to reflect back on my National Board experiance and say that this tool is exactly what the board is looking for when envolving the parents and or the community of parents with what you are doing as an individual in the classroom creating a learning team that reinforces eachother in and outside of the classroom.

You can chech this one out at: http://storysomething.com

Web 2.0- BookRix

Connecting Writer's to reader's. BookRix is an internet portal where anyone can place their own books, short stories, poems, etc.. to be laid out just like a proper book, published on the net, promoted, and sent out to friends, family, and even classmates. I find this particular tool an asset. giing through the National Board Process I was opened to much information on how to be a master teacher. Collaborative work amongst peers and envolvement with parents as well as the community seem to be rank in the highest abilities. What a great way to get our students to publish their work and share it with their families. Parents can virtually see what their child has been working on and be involved with the success of the final product.

You can check this wonderful collaborative tool at: www.bookrix.com

Web 2.0 - Summarizer

Summarizer is a way to explore all things that connect to the real-time web and other publishers covering people, places, and things. Acting as a search engine, Summarizer searches for tweets in the past 7 days on the either by user name or topic. What a great way to get my students to explore a topic we have introduced in class and see what it is that the world has to say about the given topic. This gave me an idea for my new class called "Great Books". If I introduce the major themes within the novel we are about to read my students then can go on Summerizer and read through tweets to come up with questions to be raised in our literature circles. Modeled after the "Socratic Method" my students will be abled to lead the discussion much like the Problem Based Instruction my team research in the last class. All in all I would have never have thought took look for these tools and will be using this one is my up-and-coming classes.

You can check it out at: http://thesummarizer.com

A Lesson using Flicker

We have just read about Media Literacy and it's importance as a learning to tool and I referenced George Orwell's "1984" and then went on to the assignment about Flickr. While I was researching Lesson plan ideas, it dawned on me that I already have one. What better way to introduce the concept of a Dystopian Soceity and the proganda that creates the soceity by having the student's find images from what Flickr calls "Creative Commons" to illustrate proganda. Students will have to set up a Flickr account. Set up a profile. Create a photo library and tag there photos. Each photo will be required to have a question for the "visitor to answer and comment on. The assessment will be how well the individual understands what proganda is, how well they have illustrated it in their choice, and how well they phrased their questions for comment the others will see. Students will be able to obtain the skills needed for Media Literacy without really knowing that they are. Eacg student will then share there site with the class along with at least two comments from other students. Flickr would be an awesome web 2.0 tool to engage the students and get them prep to read the novel.

Web 2.0 - Zinepal

Zinepal is used to create your own printable magazines and ebooks. Not only does this open up a whole new world for our students to explore publishing and to see there name in print, it also can solve many of the budget problem teachers face when wanting to establish a school newpaper or literary magazine. What better way to get these project started then by allowing our students to be responsible for their "copy" and find out how easy it is to upload from their personal blogs, websites, or RSS feed into a converted PDF file ready to print. How awesome is this tool at a time where our art programs are being drastically cut?!

Web 2.0 - Mashup Arts

This is a collborative site that also sends cards. What seta this apart from Blurtt is that this tool also acts as a social networking tool that others can share in your creativity. I immediatly thought of my "Canterbury Tale Project" that I do when reading Chaucer. The first step is that each individual student must creat a character modeling after how Chaucer uses characterization in the prologue to introduce the piligrims. The next step involves the collborations of groups. Each student will choose up tp three other people to work with, they then exchange their characters for each team member to evaluate. By doing so each member is lending a hand in the developing of this character and brainstorming ways that each of their characters could interact. This is where mashup would be the perfect web tool to use. My students could creat their characters and then share with their group members and each group members can comment right on their teammates, facebook, flickr, or simply go on youtube. As the teacher I can monitor the progress from the comforts of my laptops and make comments as well.

Web 2.0 - Blurtt

Blurtt is a simple an easy way to use an online interface that lets you send real, printed postcards with your own personnal handwriting to your friends or family anywhere in the world. Don't worry if you do not their address, all you need is a valid email address and Blurtt will find where to send your postcard for you. I say what a cool idea for a creative writing assignment whereas you have your students write a thank you note to a friend or family member that has changed their life because of their generosity. Who doesn't like getting mail that isn't in the form of a bill?

Social Bookmarking

According to an article based on social networking, there are three distinct advantages: one is making your bookmarks available on multiple computers which allows you to access them from any computer with a strong connection to the internet. next is "sharing", this is a great way to collaborate with collegues or other people that share in the same interest by making your bookmarks readily available to everyone in your social network.Lastly this could potentially be a good way to promote an individual's business. (Blizzard 2006)

I find that the first point that Blizzard makes would be the selling point for me since I am balancing carreer (teaching) and grad school. I have several computers and this tool would allow me to access things I want to research from my school pc to my home computer and vica versa.

The last of the 5 key benefits to social networking mentioned in a web article titled, " 5 Key Benefits of using Social Bookmarking and Media Sites" really grabbed my attention. "Traffic targeted to your content" (Woods 2009). Simply you would post your content and the public reader, reads. This tool attracks the people who are interested in what you have to offer. In a related article, Derrick woods talk about the evolution of social bookmarking with a new program called "Automatic Social Bookmark Submitter Program". It sounds complicated, but it is very simple. The program is designed to keep track of your logins information and makes it easier on the user to lacate sites, thus cutting down on the workload of research efficently.

"Social bookmarking not only makes it easier to locate, but it can also be a source of more traffic towards you site.' (Rana 2009);"

This statement I found to be the consensus amongst the expert user's in the field. It makes alot of sense that people that are in the field of marketing and business would want a tool that promotes their business while working dilligently in making their lives easier.

Although I found many advantages of the SEO tool, I would like to explore the disadvantages that some have been blogging about and that is time consumption, something that honestly everyone has a concern about.

Anti-Teaching

In the age of the 21st Century where myspace and facebook has become the popular past time among our students, we as teachers need to seriously contemplate a much needed paradigm shift in the way we approach teaching as well as learning. The "historical" way of teaching as Michael Wesch calls it in his article "Anti-Teaching" whereas the teacher stands in front of a classroom of neatly vertical rows is becoming arcahic and "Anti-teaching" (Wesch) or even anti-climatic for our leaners. Relevancy has become a huge issue in the classroom, the number of students that ask me, "Why are we reading Beowulf, Shakespeare, Chaucer, etc..." has increased drastically. Most of the time the teacher answer very defeated and says, "Itis part of out curriculium. As a first year teacher I used to be one of them. But what if we as teachers decided to have outr students get into groups of no more then three and discuss why we read the classic literature? The students would have to come up with the questions and the answers in their own small groups. I belive this is what PLE is trying to convey. The message that teachers need to allow their students to own their education and take on responsibilty without knowing their are at first. PLE is taking group activity to another level and using our students skills ie: setting up facebook. myspace, and social blogging, and incorporating it to learning. What better way for not aonly the teacher to understand, but the students to understand the concept of multi-intelligences." Each student could feed off of the others strengths and build their talents by helping their group members weakness. This all sound so wonderful, but the problem is lack of resources in our schools and or in the homes of out students. I think we as teachers could all start by introducing these strategies right in our classroom in order to better prepare our students for the future.

Fourth Month and ready to go...

I am so excitied and nervous at the same time. Time is moving so fast! I can't wait to learn about these new web 2.0 tools and share them with my school!