Week Five Blog Post - The Tools of Web 2.0

These two weeks worth of discussion have been a real eye opener for me.  I knew that I was ahead of the curve with the people that I teach with every day (my frequent efforts to convince people to use Twitter and the like has proven that), but I didn't realize how far ahead I was of people outside of my little Byfield (the town I teach in) bubble.  When I saw the list of tools that we were supposed to look at this week, I was happy to be so familiar with many of them, and those that I wasn't, it took some fairly quick research to figure out what they did and how they could be applied to and educational environment.

What I have enjoyed the most about all of these conversations is the opportunity to help people learn about the so many wonderful ways to use the web to have students create new ways to use the information beyond a "pen and paper" assessment.  It has been these weekly conversations that have convinced me that I am making the right decision in working on my library/media science degree.  While I feel that I am having a great impact on the students that I am teaching and helping them to figure out what web 2.0 tool to use best for their purpose, I believe that I can impact more students by helping teachers feel more comfortable using technology with their students.  Instead of the 100 students that I impact every year, I could help teachers and have an impact on 800 students.

Of the tools that were on our list this week, GoogleDrive is my typical "go to" site for so much.  I can have students post writing assignments as a GoogleDoc, work on presentations in GooglePresentations, give my students formative quizzes using GoogleForms, etc.  Of course, it probably isn't a fair competition, given that so much of my life revolves around Google products.

My biggest concern about some of the web 2.0 tools, such as Voki, is that a number of them require flash and so many of my students have iOS devices.  I would love to be able to use Voki more, as I think it is a great formative tool for students to use.  I am not a big fan of Jing, but I would like to have my students create screencasts in the future, and that could be a simple tool for them to work with.  I use screencast-o-matic for my flipped classroom videos, and have found it to be much easier to figure out than Jing.  That could be something I play with and figure out some way to add it to my students' toolbox.

I am looking forward to using the technology that is to come and to encouraging my classmates to come along for the ride and use it as well.  The more tools that we can add and help each other discover, the better for our students.