Web+2.0

This artifact is a web resource that can help teachers in the classroom. Below is my response to the resource and how useful it is in the classroom. This is a resource I plan to use in my future classroom.

 Web 2.0 is a great resource for teachers if they use it correctly in a classroom. It has a huge selection of technology and information for any subject. I think it can be very valuable to a teacher. It gives them a place to send students to help them with research; mapping, music, and many more topics. It can be very useful because the students can access it anyplace they have access to the internet. I did find a few resources that only require internet to download the tool and once you have it you don’t need internet. I would love to have my students use this in my classroom because it allows them more freedom and the ability to work anytime or anywhere.  The first tool I tried was called Quick Maps. It is a great geography tool because it lets you draw and place label on images found in Google Maps. This would be a great tool for a teacher when talking about states and state lines as well as when each state was founded. You can draw the old borders on a current map and compare the growth of each state. This would also be a great tool for the students to use in projects and presentations. They could use this tool when presenting on countries or even if they were trying to figure out the distance from their house to school. It could be used in math for student to figure out how far they travel to school each day. The ability to draw and write on maps isn’t something you could have done in the past. It is very useful now because many students enjoy using technology so using this in a geography class would open up a lot of new ideas for students and teachers similar to the ideas I just explained.  Gapminder is a tool I found to be quite amazing. This tool lets you compare statics and information for every country in the world. It is a “fact-based world view” giving you information like population, national and regional information, natural resources and many other useful facts. I find this to be so amazing because it has all the countries of today’s world in one location. The information they give is also quite large, you could find almost anything about any country and then compare it with others. When you compare information you can have it come out in many different ways; as fact sheets or even graphs when comparing information. This site gives you other information in different graphs like CO2 admissions and amount of oil pulled out of the earth. All the graphs and information can be found on a computer without internet access; which is what makes this my favorite tool. In my classroom I would use it in math, to show students different graphs and have them find and present information about topics using all the different graphs I taught about. This would require the students to understand the graphing concepts taught and then apply them, which means this task could test students on graphing in a way not possible without this data-base.  The next tool I used was under the Collaborative Tools and I know how useful these tools can be; because of the group work required in some college classes. I looked at ShowDocument.com which is similar to Google Docs or Wiki Space, in that, you can share documents and other information with other people for free over the internet. It can also store information. I would find this tool very helpful when teaching on snow-days or communicating to students who can’t be at school. As a special educator I know some students might not make it to school every day and if I set up a class assignment/note page the students could access the information from home. This will work great for very ill students or snow-days that can come at inconvenient times. This keeps the students involved in learning even if they can’t come to class.  Tikatok was under writing tools. It is a great writing tool that I will definitely use in my future class if I need to do a writing assignment. This tool allows student to create books and stories on the internet with turning pages and pictures. It can also be printed into a hard copy paper book. What I like about this tool is that you can actually print out books after you make them. I would use this tool as a summer assignment for students or just a big writing project where they need to write a book using this resource. I would also have the students create a book for poems and then have them email me the books to be graded because this tool allows them to be emailed. This I think the students would find nice because they don’t have to get all their work done at school. It also lets them turn-in the books when at home.  The last one I tried was under creativity. This tool and whole category is great for students who finish their work earlier. It offers many strategy games and problem solving games which I find appropriate for students who finish work earlier. I also found some of the other games like Questionaut test students on English as well. I think these are very educational games and worthy of students who finish work early. The games also allowed you to tract progress so students could compare with each other. This is a good tool to keep students busy even if they finish early. It’s also a great incentive for the students. I would use this as something students can do if they finish earlier.