Vicki’s Web 2.0

Once upon a time a teacher told me that parents should not buy digital watches for their kids because the kids would not learn how to tell time.  Likewise, if they have Velcro shoes they won’t learn how to tie shoes.  If they only “talk” to each other over the internet, what will they miss?   What will they gain?  Is it worth it?  Does it matter?  It is happening and it isn’t going away.  The computer is a tool.  We as educators must learn to incorporate it in our teaching and model the ethics.  There is only so much time in the day and these skills can not be add-ons.

The most valuable thing about this class was just learning the vast amount of collaboration that is out there.  I really liked Flckr, Pageflakes and YouTube.  Creative Commons was important information to have. I did not spend a lot of time at these sites, but I plan to go back and look these sites over more this summer.

I enjoyed making changes to my pageflake.  The only problem is there are so many choices.  I was interested in some of the comments that were made about the choices as they helped me to choose what I wanted to add.  As for educational uses, I am toying with the idea of having the second grade students have their own pageflake to do weather.  Each child can be assigned a city and when they come into the classroom they can check the weather in that city and keep a record on there pageflake.  A calendar and comment box could also be incorporated.  Maybe I can figure out a way to keep a spreadsheet and graph of high temperatures on their pageflake.  I saw a place to make your own.  I will put that on my summer list of things to do.

Here is the thing.  All of this is very interesting, and I am definitely putting a mental bookmark in my mind to match these websites with future curriculum plans.  However most of the things I find are just not that useful in my teaching situation.  Our children are so young and we only have them for a short amount of time at irregular intervals.  I really do like the idea of networking with teachers who teach what I teach.  Visiting on the Classroom 2.0 I found one teacher who had several topics that interested me.  As I went to several of her postings I began to feel like I knew her.  (Wow I am really worried about the decline in honey bees, but glad to know it isn’t due to wireless, according to Spanish entomologist.)

I can certainly see how Ning and Classroom 2.0 can create a feeling of global connectedness.  If I search some more maybe I can find a social network for K – 3 science teachers. Definitely it is a place for professional growth and learning.

 I can certainly see how these two sites could keep you occupied for a long time.  There is so much to choose from.  I was already convinced that anything you want to know is some where on the internet.  I even have my non-technological husband looking for things on the internet.  I might like to try putting some of my lessons on Teacher-Tube.  I will have to think on this some more as to what would be beneficial to the teaching community.

Wow, This one was hard.  I couldn’t get my equipment to work, but finally with a lot of help from coach, Kim, I was successful.  I am really looking forward to implementing this program.  I keep thinking of even more things I can Podcast.

Very much like UPN.  We are planning to do a podcast on our Bug reports for second grade.  They will do research from websites garnered from our delicious account and embedded in our wiki.  They will then take notes and write a report that they will then podcast about the pictures they have drawn of their insect.  Yeah!  Learning can be fun and useful.

We are sharing a Google Doc with web sites that we can use with the students for research.  We can put these websites in our wiki and the students have a safe place to research.  My co-teacher and I work together on several projects and have to save them to the network or email them to each other.  The Google Docs will allow us a better format for sharing.

I am a habitual list maker.  I have to do list on my work desktop and my home desktop, my home desk and work desk.  I don’t have any great desire to share these personal things, but who knows, maybe getting a cheer might help me stay on track with some of my goals.  I checked out a tag that sent me back to flicker.  I really like how all these places we are going connect to each other.  I think I am starting to get the big picture about Web 2.0.  As for class use, if you were doing a big project that had several steps, your kids to list the steps, and blog to each other about their progress.

Personally I can use Library Thing to help keep track of books I have read by a particular author and find more books in that genre or by that author.  For my classroom I could catalog my children’s books using the tags, so that I can find books on a particular topic. This one is a keeper.

I went to 30 boxes but I found that difficult to navigate.  The directions were not clear or even there for someone like me.  Then I went to Mixbook and created a scrapbook with the pictures I got from Flicker.  Very easy to navigate and I was happy to use my flicker pics again.  We will be studying the life cycle of the butterfly and we could take pictures every day and make a book.  The children could put their own words as to what they observed. If you want to create phot albums and not get your fingers sticky this ones for you.