Web 2.0 Awards List
As a math teacher currently teaching Data Analysis, one of the websites I found really intriguing was swivel.com . Swivel allows you to upload data and create charts based on the information your provided. You can then share your charts/data with others, and see theirs. From a teaching perspective its a wealth of examples to show my students how these graphs can be used every day. Unfortunately many of the websites were blocked by our firewall/security so I will have to investigate more later from another computer.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Thing # 18
Online Productivity Tools
Open Office looks interesting to me, but unfortunately I can't download and save anything to my school computer. However, I do have experience with google docs, and similar programs (specifically one offered by yahoo). I find Google Docs to be a great way to share information, and in fact use it frequently in Grad School for group projects. Its the easiest way to share documents without having to send huge emails that fill up servers with attachments. Luckily at school we have a common drive that everyone can access, so this is not necessarily a tool we would need, but if that weren't the case it would be awesome to use to share lessons.
Open Office looks interesting to me, but unfortunately I can't download and save anything to my school computer. However, I do have experience with google docs, and similar programs (specifically one offered by yahoo). I find Google Docs to be a great way to share information, and in fact use it frequently in Grad School for group projects. Its the easiest way to share documents without having to send huge emails that fill up servers with attachments. Luckily at school we have a common drive that everyone can access, so this is not necessarily a tool we would need, but if that weren't the case it would be awesome to use to share lessons.
Thing # 17
Learning 2.0 Sandbox Wiki
There are some AWESOME ideas in the sandbox. As a math teacher one of my favorites was the idea of posting the Problem of the Week in a wiki and having the students contribute information and their thoughts to it throughout the week. I think that wiki's could be an awesome tool in effective communication with my students, but I think we would need access to more computers before it would become a reality.
There are some AWESOME ideas in the sandbox. As a math teacher one of my favorites was the idea of posting the Problem of the Week in a wiki and having the students contribute information and their thoughts to it throughout the week. I think that wiki's could be an awesome tool in effective communication with my students, but I think we would need access to more computers before it would become a reality.
Thing # 16
Wikis
I was excited to get to this "thing" because I think Wikis are incredibly useful and I use them frequently. The thing I love most about Wikis is the feature that allows multiple authors to contribute. It's a great way to facilitate communication within a class and between teachers and students. I think starting a wiki on a topic and having students search for and add information is a great way to introduce a topic and have students contribute their preknowledge. Also, on a sidenote, I recently just started using a wikispace to keep up with a group from my church that meets every Sunday night at my house and its been an incredible way to efficiently disseminate information throughout the group and provide a space for discussion.
I was excited to get to this "thing" because I think Wikis are incredibly useful and I use them frequently. The thing I love most about Wikis is the feature that allows multiple authors to contribute. It's a great way to facilitate communication within a class and between teachers and students. I think starting a wiki on a topic and having students search for and add information is a great way to introduce a topic and have students contribute their preknowledge. Also, on a sidenote, I recently just started using a wikispace to keep up with a group from my church that meets every Sunday night at my house and its been an incredible way to efficiently disseminate information throughout the group and provide a space for discussion.
Thing # 15
Web 2.0, Library 2.0 & The Future....
Disclaimer: I am not a librarian.
However, from what I read in several of the articles I am catching on to Library/Web 2.0 and the technology. From my understanding its addressing the ever increasing need to bring Libraries into the technology age. Librarians are at a point where collections of books are becoming less important and access to technology is becoming a necessity. Gone are the days where research is done in book stacks and here are the days where a research paper can be created solely from sources found in internet searches. To address these needs librarians need to become masters of the web based tools that can help their patrons access these collections of digital information. Which is why 23 things is so awesome. We are all getting a chance to see a side of the internet that you dont encounter on a daily basis, and discover tools that will help us as we address the needs of our time.
Disclaimer: I am not a librarian.
However, from what I read in several of the articles I am catching on to Library/Web 2.0 and the technology. From my understanding its addressing the ever increasing need to bring Libraries into the technology age. Librarians are at a point where collections of books are becoming less important and access to technology is becoming a necessity. Gone are the days where research is done in book stacks and here are the days where a research paper can be created solely from sources found in internet searches. To address these needs librarians need to become masters of the web based tools that can help their patrons access these collections of digital information. Which is why 23 things is so awesome. We are all getting a chance to see a side of the internet that you dont encounter on a daily basis, and discover tools that will help us as we address the needs of our time.
Thing # 14
Technorati
Thing #9 was the first time I encountered Technorati, and now here I am again. I searched "School Library Learning 2.0" in the blog posts, tags and Blog directory. When I looked it up in Posts, i got, Surprise! a lot of posts contained in 23 things blogs! It was kind of fun actually to see that people across the US are doing this same exercise. When I performed the same search in blogs I found alot of blogs specifically related to the topic, School Library Learning 2.0. Doing the same search on del.icio.us I found mainly tutorial pdf files related to Library Learning 2.0. Exploring the popular blog searches and tags page I found that the majority of them were technology related, which makes me think that this tagging tool is mostly used by people who are very advanced in their computer/technology skill, and frequently use these simple tools, that seem less useful to me.
Overall, I can see the benefits of tagging (as I said before), but I do not think its something that I will do (at least not consistently - although I do love how tags work on Flickr!)
Thing #9 was the first time I encountered Technorati, and now here I am again. I searched "School Library Learning 2.0" in the blog posts, tags and Blog directory. When I looked it up in Posts, i got, Surprise! a lot of posts contained in 23 things blogs! It was kind of fun actually to see that people across the US are doing this same exercise. When I performed the same search in blogs I found alot of blogs specifically related to the topic, School Library Learning 2.0. Doing the same search on del.icio.us I found mainly tutorial pdf files related to Library Learning 2.0. Exploring the popular blog searches and tags page I found that the majority of them were technology related, which makes me think that this tagging tool is mostly used by people who are very advanced in their computer/technology skill, and frequently use these simple tools, that seem less useful to me.
Overall, I can see the benefits of tagging (as I said before), but I do not think its something that I will do (at least not consistently - although I do love how tags work on Flickr!)
Thing # 13
del.icio.us
Interesting idea, however I found it a little overwhelming. Since anyone can use Tags without discretion del.icio.us just provides endless lists containing the tags to sift through. It was fun to see what other people thought related to some categories and I really liked the del.icio.us homepage which allowed me to see what's being viewed alot on the "hotlist". I just bought an iPhone this week and was immediately drawn to some of the tags related to apple/iPhone, and actually got directed to some pretty useful sites that I'll be visiting more as I learn to use the crazy thing! Overall though I don 't see myself really seeing the need to start tagging my internet postings, and I find normal searches a little more useful than tag searches. However, I could see that it might be a good place to start for students looking for a variety of sources and not knowing where to start. However, I think as a teacher I would be very wary of using this type of search because some of the tags are not at all related to the topic, and unfortunately could misdirect students to an inappropriate page.
Interesting idea, however I found it a little overwhelming. Since anyone can use Tags without discretion del.icio.us just provides endless lists containing the tags to sift through. It was fun to see what other people thought related to some categories and I really liked the del.icio.us homepage which allowed me to see what's being viewed alot on the "hotlist". I just bought an iPhone this week and was immediately drawn to some of the tags related to apple/iPhone, and actually got directed to some pretty useful sites that I'll be visiting more as I learn to use the crazy thing! Overall though I don 't see myself really seeing the need to start tagging my internet postings, and I find normal searches a little more useful than tag searches. However, I could see that it might be a good place to start for students looking for a variety of sources and not knowing where to start. However, I think as a teacher I would be very wary of using this type of search because some of the tags are not at all related to the topic, and unfortunately could misdirect students to an inappropriate page.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
