"Create 2.1.2 – Using Web 2.0 Tools to Differentiate Teacher Instruction" Quest
Relying on Web 2.0 Tools in the classroom can be at once exciting and frustrating. One source of frustration is when your school requires you to maintain a webpage via the school's server or product software: the teacher spends a lifetime creating, linking, contributing valuable resources to her page only to return at the start of the following school year to be told that the school system is switching products and all of her hard work has been deleted. This happened to me one time years ago and from that day forward, I vowed that I would take my webpage into my own hands so that when the school changed again in the future, I would still have "my" webpage to rely upon. That was one of the best decisions I ever made because I simply did the bare minimum on my school page, then linked out to my "real" webpage.
However, what do you do when your "real" webpage, which was free, suddenly starts charging? As was discussed in “Using Web 2.0 Tools in School” , teachers must recognize that nothing in life is free and that if the tool is something worth using, then it is worth spending the money to continue its use. Teachers also have to do more than maintain a useful webpage for students in order to avoid the "flat" classroom, as discussed in “A Web 2.0 Class: Student Learn 21st Century Skills, Collaboration, and Digital Citizenship”. Collaborating weekly with other schools, students blog about what they are learning as digital citizens, participate in Skype meeting with each other and guest speakers, and learn to be effective communicators. On a related but different note, the article “Social Networking in the Classroom” encourages teachers to use social media in the classroom but doesn't really provide any suggestions as fodder for how to do just that. Conversely, the videos for Free Web 2.0 Tools provide numerous engaging and interactive resources, such as Scratch (design a game or other interactive activity which people can download and they themselves alter to form a new creation), Secondlife (a virtual reality website through which you can learn and travel through portals), Wikispaces (build a website), and Voicethread (a collaborative cloud-based environment). While these are not social media tools, the resources do all contain that element of socializing that engenders an atmosphere of fun.
I've created Voicethreads for my students to use. I post a topic and students are required to comment orally on the topic. They are required to leave commentaries about other's posts as well. For example, I created a thread where AP French students were asked to watch a video where people in France react to the idea of homosexual marriage. The students were asked to react to the video and to compare it to the current situation in the United States. Students enjoyed this assignment, as was evident by their voices in the posts as well as what they had to say about the topic.
Relying on Web 2.0 Tools in the classroom can be at once exciting and frustrating. One source of frustration is when your school requires you to maintain a webpage via the school's server or product software: the teacher spends a lifetime creating, linking, contributing valuable resources to her page only to return at the start of the following school year to be told that the school system is switching products and all of her hard work has been deleted. This happened to me one time years ago and from that day forward, I vowed that I would take my webpage into my own hands so that when the school changed again in the future, I would still have "my" webpage to rely upon. That was one of the best decisions I ever made because I simply did the bare minimum on my school page, then linked out to my "real" webpage.
However, what do you do when your "real" webpage, which was free, suddenly starts charging? As was discussed in “Using Web 2.0 Tools in School” , teachers must recognize that nothing in life is free and that if the tool is something worth using, then it is worth spending the money to continue its use. Teachers also have to do more than maintain a useful webpage for students in order to avoid the "flat" classroom, as discussed in “A Web 2.0 Class: Student Learn 21st Century Skills, Collaboration, and Digital Citizenship”. Collaborating weekly with other schools, students blog about what they are learning as digital citizens, participate in Skype meeting with each other and guest speakers, and learn to be effective communicators. On a related but different note, the article “Social Networking in the Classroom” encourages teachers to use social media in the classroom but doesn't really provide any suggestions as fodder for how to do just that. Conversely, the videos for Free Web 2.0 Tools provide numerous engaging and interactive resources, such as Scratch (design a game or other interactive activity which people can download and they themselves alter to form a new creation), Secondlife (a virtual reality website through which you can learn and travel through portals), Wikispaces (build a website), and Voicethread (a collaborative cloud-based environment). While these are not social media tools, the resources do all contain that element of socializing that engenders an atmosphere of fun.
I've created Voicethreads for my students to use. I post a topic and students are required to comment orally on the topic. They are required to leave commentaries about other's posts as well. For example, I created a thread where AP French students were asked to watch a video where people in France react to the idea of homosexual marriage. The students were asked to react to the video and to compare it to the current situation in the United States. Students enjoyed this assignment, as was evident by their voices in the posts as well as what they had to say about the topic.
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