Web 2.0 Course Reflection

Wow! That was a lot of tools/resources covered in a short stretch of time. At times I've felt overwhelmed, curious, perplexed, and excited by the all of the possibilities these topics have for teaching and learning! I need to remember that this truly was an introduction to just some of the web tools available to us. There is no way I can become proficient with them all over the course of 12 weeks. I am happy to at least have had the chance to mess around a bit with each and feel comfortable developing a better understanding of how I can incorporate some of the tools in my teaching as time allows.
I have already implemented some of the tools in my teaching and can envision the applications of others. If had to identify the top 3 web 2.0 tools covered in this course that will impact my teaching, the list would include:
Social Bookmarking : gather and share great resources
Google Sites: A venue to communicate with students and their families.
Presentations : Learning how to effective communicate using various web tools

Presentations

I enjoyed exploring the various resources on creating and sharing presentations. It was very interesting to read that a PowerPoint presentation should really be the background support for the oral presentation. It is our job to help prepare our student to be effective communicators and teach them the elements of a successful presentation.

I found the slideshare resource to be engaging and fairly easy to use. I can certainly see is appeal to my students and will attempt implement its use in the classroom.

Podcasting

Although I have been listening to podcasts for entertainmnet purposes for a long time, I guess I hadn't thought about having possibilities to have students create podcasts to share their work. I have many students who would benefit from having the option to orally share their discoveries and knowledge. Through exploring podcasts that other elementary students have created, I can envision many uses for this tool. I've seen excellent book reviews, shared writing, and explanations of science experiments.
I will continue to explore and learn more about creating, using, and sharing podcast to showcase my students' school work.

Wiki

Yet another great web tool uncovered! I am beginning to feel like I do when I go out for appetizers with friends. Everything looks great and I start in enjoying all the different great tastes and then all of a sudden, not another bite! Not even a pea!
Who knows, maybe if wikis were one of the first resources that we explored, I would have endorsed it and had great collaborative sites up and running to share the teaching and learning directly with my students. As Connie stated in her reply to me in my forum post, "You've been exposed to this tool, and someday you may see the fit for your classroom." Well stated!

Work on Google Site

I continue to work on building a site in order to better communicate with students and their families. I hope my site will be a vehicle for families to gather information of what we are doing in the classroom, to view student work, and to access resources.

I have created a few different pages so far. I feel that I got the hang of creating a page of resources with active links. I was able to create links to web sites as well as linking a page within my site.
I was able to insert pictures from the web on my volcano page. I have tried uploading some images from my computer(illustrations that the students created), but have been unable to insert them into my site. I tried creating a presentation using google docs with the images but was not successful loading the file. I also tried attaching the file the illustrations were in to one of my site pages, but once again was unsuccessful.

So I now have a good idea what I want to explore futher to add to my google site!

Google Sites

This is kind of what I was hoping for! We have been introduced to a number of great tools and resources through this course, but my goal was to come away with something that I could use to communicate with to students and their families. I am just getting a handle on using creating a site and look forward to learning more in the next few weeks, months, and years!

Google Docs

As big and powerful as google docs is, I do not forsee utilizing it much with my students. Based on my limited experience with google docs, I would say that it is geared for an audience that is more technology savy than my third graders. I say this based on the collaborative nature of many of the applications found in google docs.

I do however see the value in becoming more familiar and thus more comfortable using google docs myself. I really like the idea of being able to compose, save, and store many different kinds fo documents online. The ability to access the documents from any computer, anywhere is a very inticing feature.