Collaborative Tools

I think the use of collaborative tools in ANY way is a positive for my students. I currently teach fifth grade and they are very tech-savvy. They enjoy any chance to get online to search, learn, share and just explore. The use of collaborative tools would be an opportunity to extend our learning and experience in the classroom. I see huge potential. I took a look at the various sites: coursesites.com, edmodo.com and collaborizeclassroom. I see pros to all but preferred edmodo the most. I think it appeals to me, as an elementary school teacher. There are accounts with group codes required and that keeps it social media but in a safe way. I also like the feature of giving parents access with their own accounts so they can shadow their child's work and keep posted on what we are doing in class. I also love the feature of students uploading their work and utilizing a drop box where I can access it. All three sites make it easy to upload content to share with others, and enabling participants/students to comment, create and share their own work. Also, evaluating work and giving grades or course information is readily accessible with all three. They are visually appealing and offer a wide range of options to engage the audience and promote dialogue and connection. I found coursesites to be more adult in setup and arrangement. I think it would be great for a high school or college course. I found collaborize to be useful as a teacher working with their students and as a colleague wanting to engage professionally with other teachers. The bank of lesson plans and curriculum ideas would be quite an asset. Finally, I liked the grade level/discipline groups that edmodo offers - they suggest activities and online links to support the learning in the classroom.

My website

Here is my my pages of my school website.  I've worked to create a resource for my students and hope  to continue to add to it as I learn how.  I want my students to have easy access to what we do in class.  I think it's a work in progress, as I am new to my job and still figuring out what tools my students are competent in and are lacking.  I do know they love to look at themselves - so the photo gallery option is a must!   My colleagues and I are working to collaborate on what information should be online for students to ease any school-home angst.  There are many ways this can support my students if they are well-versed in how to navigate the page and request more information so I can continually build this powerful tool.

Web 2.0 Tools Reflection

I see a lot of value in the Web 2.0 tools I reviewed for these assignments.  Many of them are part of my classroom already in a variety of ways, and others intrigue me.  I hope to add them to my classroom repertoire soon.   I think most promote greater collaboration than what we’ve, as educators, had before and the avenues of creativity are so vast in all the different, unique tools and sites created.  Opportunities are endless!  I do see them in my future – personally and professionally.  Having lived and taught overseas, they’ve helped me stay in touch with friends around the world and connect with like-minded colleagues and educators to incorporate new tools, strategies and best practices into my classroom.  Professionally, the opportunities are endless.  Now I don’t feel alone in my classroom, there are fabulous sites, activities, connections, links, etc at my fingertips to enhance instruction and increase my students’ understanding.  I would hate to have choose only one Web 2.0 tool as there are so many that I love and find valuable.  One that I have become better about utilizing this year is Google Docs.  The many applications of Google are among my favorites.   I especially like the use of Google docs with my students in reviewing and conferencing on their reading and writing.  Additionally it’s a great way to schedule meetings with parents, get feedback and make unit curriculum plans with groups of people.   

Web 2.0 Tools in Education

Edmodo

Edmodo is a free site that offers the world of blogging and collaboration to students and teachers in a safe, educational setting.  I have just started using it this year, as a pilot program and many of my students love it.  It’s surprising to see which of them are quite engaged and offer many of their ideas and opinions, though in class they are quiet and don’t often participate.  I like this alternative opportunity it provides for them to share.  It can be used to gather information from students in surveys and polls, disseminate information with links, attachments or text, and it provides a venue for thinking, reflection and collaboration with students.  www.edmodo.com

Prezi

Prezi is a free online tool that can be used as an alternative to power point.  It has huge potential in the way you can connect your information and help your audience see your stream of ideas and thoughts.  It has a great zoom feature that allows the user to embed pictures, videos, etc within the presentation and makes for an interesting view.  I just created my first prezi and my students positively received it.  I found it a bit picky in creating one of my own but appreciated all the tutorials, help categories and large gallery of completed public prezi presentations that I could refer to often. http://prezi.com/

ToonDooSpaces

ToonDoo Spaces is a great online source for creating and sharing comics written by students in a protected, safe environment.  My students love creating comic strips and would LOVE this website.  It has great connection with our writing workshop model in sharing and getting feedback from one another.  I also think the use of the website would be a huge incentive for some of my students as it seems like their work is being published.  It does require you to create an account so students’ work would not be shared publicly.  There is a huge gallery of images available to make the creation of the comic strip to go rather quickly, once the idea, sketches and text are created.  I’m trying this one as soon as our current unit is wrapped up. 

http://www.toondoospaces.com/

Glogster

Glogster is a great online resource for students in creating collaborative projects and interactive posters.    I see this as an easy way to incorporate technology into our science and social studies topics.  Students would love to find text, visuals and video to support their glogster topic.  Its link to Google Earth is a great geography connection and its link to Edmodo would be a neat addition to our class blogging.  I will try to incorporate this into my classroom this year – I think it would be a good match to a study of George Washington coming up in late spring.    There is a gallery of excellent completed glogsters to preview and use.  There seem to be a lot of supports in place for any novice, student or teacher to figure it out.

http://edu.glogster.com/

Kerpoof Scholastics

Kerpoof Scholastics is a multimedia site where stories can be created, games can be played and many lessons are stored and shared.  The graphics programs included offer great options and the way a story can be clearly laid out and created are user-friendly and fun.  I know my students would love this!  The choices of settings, backgrounds, and clipart are endless!  There is a huge bank of lessons already written that use many of the Kerpoof tools.  In addition, there are games that are fun and somewhat educational.  I can see using this site as one students can work on independently, once we’ve reviewed the basics as there is so much there, they can choose from.  

http://www.kerpoof.com/teach

Top Web 2.0 Tools

Twitter

Twitter is a social media site that allows you to update your status or ideas to the world and your followers in 140 characters or less.  Its overall purpose is to stay connected with those around the world by tweeting news, opinions and stories.  It’s used mostly by younger people – anyone with a smart phone and is a great way to share a picture, video or interesting link.  Jack Dorsey and some colleagues at Odeo founded Twitter in March 2006.  For my personal use, it’s a great way to stay connected with friends and family far away.  Professionally there are many educators and technology enthusiasts that share interesting articles, great links, and much information that I find helpful with my own teaching.  www.twitter.com

YouTube or Teacher Tube

YouTube was founded in 2005, as a site to share, view and comment on videos uploaded and available to all.   The three founders are Chad Hurley, Steven Chen and Jawed Karim.  Less than two years of founding YouTube, they sold it to Google for 1.65 billion.   The site is a great way to share personal videos with friends, faraway family and your chance to show all those funny family video clips.  I think it’s used widely by all ages of people.  Many videos have gone ‘viral’ and been viewed by millions of viewers.  I’ve used it in my classroom to upload some class activities and share various clips I’ve found.  Though I have to be careful about the content elsewhere on the page.   Sometimes viewers’ comments or other video clips are inappropriate for my audience.  My students are YouTube users as viewers and have their favorite clips they’ve watched and enjoyed over and over.  www.youtube.com

Flickr

Flickr is a site to organize and share your photos and videos online.  It was created in 2004 by the company Ludicorp and bought by Yahoo a year later.  I think mainly adults, owners of digital cameras, use it.  It’s also used by many bloggers that want to embed pictures and videos into their blogs.   I haven’t used Flickr before but have used similar sites (Picasa, Shutterfly) personally and professionally, to share pictures with parents and students on my school website.  www.flickr.com

Picnik

Picnik is a photo-editing site that enables users to edit their digital photos for free.  Most photo editing requires specific software to be bought and Picnik was offering it all free and very user-friendly.  Most Flickr users were also using Picnik if editing was required. All was started by Darrin Massena and Mike Harrington in Seattle in the fall of 2005.  It was acquired by Google in 2010 and is now being phased out as Google+ offers many photo editing tools of its own.  It will be closed in April 2012.   I haven’t used Picnik but could see using something similar with my students when we incorporate images into their work and projects.  Knowing how to edit, crop, and resize pictures are important skills that will be useful in school and life.  www.picnik.com

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, editable, online encyclopedia and is available in multiple languages.  It started as an offshoot of Nupedia, the first online attempt at an encyclopedia, and began in 2001.  It is different from a regular encyclopedia in that all can edit its content and content s being added daily.  There are potential problems with inaccurate info or vandalism of information occurring but the company has put many measures in place to minimize this.  I think it’s used universally and by a wide range of ages.  It’s easy to read and so vast in the topics available.  If only a little info is needed, it’s an easy quick stop.  I’ve used it in class minimally as I try to push my students to go elsewhere in their research.  I could be using it more often as it’s so user-friendly.  www.wikipedia.org

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Jing

Jing is an online tool that helps you take screenshots and screencasts and share them instantly.    It is just one of many screenshot/cast tools available through TechSmith, a company that released the Jing Project in 2007.    I see a variety of purposes with this tool, useful to anyone that is sharing info to an audience of some sort.   I think it’s a great tool for any teachers, trainers, or anyone that has skills and strategies to cover in a visual, interesting way.   I have never used it myself but see some huge potential in creating short videos of math strategies, getting screenshots of various maps we label and edit in class to share as a study tool and enhance my students’ learning experiences.    I think my students like creating the screencasts themselves and the topic areas to cover are endless.  I would like to do more research on this site and hope to learn more by watching tutorials and trying it out myself. http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

Slideshare

Slideshare is an online source for uploading and sharing power points, presentations and other documents.  It began in October 2006 and has a long list of users – Fortune 500 companies, the White House and other govt agencies and many, many bloggers.    I have not used the site before but think it would be a great way to share the presentations I have created for parents and students in the past.  I think the potential of content I can add to my website gives my students more tools to work with independently and this site would be a good start. http://www.slideshare.net/   

Wordle

Wordle is a site that offers a visual way to share writing, thinking and collaborative work through ‘word clouds.’  I’ve used this site many times in my classroom and students LOVE it!  It was created in 2008, as a version of a tag cloud, by Jonathon Feinberg, a senior engineer at IBM.  I’ve used wordle to collect big ideas at the beginning and end of a unit, as reflection of a common experience, as an icebreaker in sharing about ourselves and there are numerous other potential possibilities.    I think it’s used by many students, teachers, schools, bloggers and anyone hoping to capture someone’s attention with the visual appeal of wordle. http://www.wordle.net/

Museumbox

Museumbox is an online tool to create a virtual box of information, pictures and artifacts surrounding an idea of importance.  This could be a person, a historical topic or a controversial topic.  Boxes created can contain text, pictures, sounds and video to present a thorough and creative view of a specific topic.  I was unable to find out information on its founder but see Thomas Clarkson, an abolitionist that helped slaves escape to freedom, inspired the whole project.  I think teachers and students are the biggest users of this tool and have registered my school in hopes I will be a user soon.  I haven’t used this site but hope to use it in the future as an alternative way for students to present their researched information.  One unit in particular I think it would lend itself well is my students’ study of European explorers.  I think the hunt for creative items to add to the box would be an entertaining challenge for most.

http://museumbox.e2bn.org/

My 1st Prezi on Story Elements

Story Elements on Prezi

It was fun to try this great alternative to powerpoint.  I had fun creating a piece to use in my classroom.  I focused on story elements.  I will use as a review of our learning in reading workshop.  As well it's a hook before we jump into fiction writing in writing workshop.  I can't wait to show my class!  

PLNs

Two weeks ago, I had no idea what a personal learning network was.  Now I'm immersed in endless blogs, nings, and plns.  I am very excited at all the knowledge and expertise at my fingertips.  I now have such strong resources for any question or need in my classroom.
I have been a blog reader for years.  At first it was just for fun and a good way to get new recipe ideas and/or a new title that would be good for my classroom.  As my blog reading increased, I returned to some over and over when I was looking to be inspired.  Now with diigo, I can bookmark and highlight these sites with ease.  I decided to join a few groups through diigo that are connected to elementary education and technology.  I will be exposed to new and innovative ideas through this wealth of information. ( http://www.diigo.com/user/carabarnes)
I joined two Ning groups - Elementary PLNs and Elementary 2.0.   Both have SO much information on them I was a bit overwhelmed.  I feel like a need a cheat sheet with some of the terms, acronyms and tech tools mentioned.  I am not sure if I'll be posting there with any questions or ideas but plan to visit them regularly to see what topics are coming up that I'm interested in.  For both, I used my full name as my sign in - Cara Barnes. 
I am considering this blog, that I experimented with at my last school a bit,  a work in progress.  I hope to develop it into something useful professionally and with my study of technology.  I do know with all the connections I've made this week, I'll have lots of models, examples and expertise to use, at the click of a mouse.