The Future of Web 2.0

I read Om Malik's article entitled the "The Myth, Reality, & Future of Web 2.0." Although his article focuses more on Web 2.0 in the business and technology world, he addressed several good points that I feel sum up Web 2.0 and its role in education. He compared Web 2.0 to Indian food. Like the taste of Indian food, it may take some time to adjust of the "flavor" of Web 2.0, but once people do Web 2.0 is really going to blossom. I think this is especially true in the teaching world. Teachers come in all shapes, sizes, and ages, and have a wide variety of technological capabilities. There are young teachers who know very little about technology and others that would be excited to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. There are old teachers that want nothing to do with learning something new before they retire and others who would be willing to further their education in terms of technology. It will be virtually impossible to get everyone on the same page. However, if we give Web 2.0 and the capabilities that accompany it a chance, it has the opportunity to change our students and our schools.

Malik also mentions that Web 2.0 applications offer software on demand, cheap hardware, open standards, and tons of bandwidth. This really hit home for me. Every year is constant struggle for teachers and schools in terms of budget. Important programs are being cut, and good teachers are losing jobs due to budget cuts. Can we depend on Web 2.0 for all our technology needs? Probably not...but think of the opportunities it presents in terms of helping with budget demands. So much of it is online, is free, and is able to downloaded. Right now, it seems to me that the fear present when discussing Web 2.0 is simply due to a lack of knowledge. If we educate our teachers and our students on the benefits of Web 2.0 and give it some time to sink in, it could become a very important asset in education.

YackPack (Podcast Report #4)

YackPack is a simple, fun, and private way for you to send and receive audio messages to people who are also in your “Pack” or “Packs.” You have the option to create and belong to more than one Pack. You can have a Pack designed for work, one for family, and one for friends. You, as well as everyone you would like in your Packs, must have a YackPack account. YackPack provides an easy method of recording. Simply click on the pictures and names of the people who you want to receive the message. Click Record and begin recording your message. When finished with your audio message, click Send. Ta-da! Your audio message is sent!

I found YackPack to be very intriguing. It only seems logical that you can talk faster than you can type or write. What a perfect way to get a quick message to someone without taking the time to write it down. Teachers could record lessons, oral notes, or lectures, and students could access them outside of the one time they hear it in class. Business people could record meeting content and relay information through a podcast rather than face-to-face. In class, we also talked about using YackPack when grading projects. The worst part about giving a project in the classroom is the time it takes to give each kid the feedback they deserve after the work they put in. It can take hours and hours to write or even type all you want to say. How fun (and maybe a little easier for the teacher) would it be for the students to get their feedback in a YackPack message rather than on a paper rubric? You could send class announcements or reminders about due dates using YackPack. The only roadblock I can see is that I don’t work for a district where the students have school email addresses. I would venture a guess that most students have a personal email account but not all. Again, how do we keep things fair and reach our students without access to a computer or the Internet? It is a never-ending battle.

The Phantom Tollbooth

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Radio WillowWeb

"Radio for kids, by kids from Willowdale Elementary School in Omaha, Nebraska." I listened to Radio WillowWeb's Space Mission podcast given by the fifth graders. The entire podcast was written by the students in the class and addressed many different curricular areas, containing topics like Poetry Corner, Jokes and Riddles, Did You Know?, Science Class, Vocabulary Theatre, and Wonderful Website. During Poetry Corner, one of the students read a space-themed poem she had written and then told the audience why she liked it, her favorite part of it, and what the poem reminded her of. There were several students that shared jokes and riddles they had written about space, making the host of Space Mission try and guess the answers. The best joke: Where do astronauts park their space shuttle? At a parking meteor! :) During Science Class, the order of the planets was sung and fun facts about certain planets were shared. The kids went so far as to explain that their teacher would have weighed over 200 pounds standing on Neptune but only 9 pounds on Pluto (the podcast was from 2005). In Vocabulary Theatre, the listener got to hear BOTH definitions of "Milky Way" in great detail. Finally, the class invited the listeners to their choice for Wonderful Website. In podcasts like these, it is so much fun to listen to children's voices doing the teaching. The students in this podcast were very professional, making few mistakes, and their excitement for the project was evident in their voices. Shorter podcasts like this one, made by other students, would be perfect to use as an introduction to a planet unit. What a way to grab the attention of your class...listening to space riddles or poems or a few fun facts right before they begin the unit themselves. Great Job Radio WillowWeb!

Gliffy (Software Report #3)

Gliffy allows you to create “Inspiration”-like diagrams and graphic organizers in your web browser without having to download any software. You can design a variety of diagrams including flowcharts, floor plans, and network diagrams. The site not only allows you to draw the diagrams on the web, but you can then share them with others. It uses an easy drop-and-drag method of placing the icons and text into the document to create the diagram. A large variety of geometric shapes, arrows, and colors are available to help customize your design.

This seems to have limitless possibilities in a classroom. Students could create timelines, flowcharts, outlines, or character analyses to name a few. Teachers could use Gliffy to create a seating chart of their classroom. They could type in the names of the students using the text box features and then change the names when a new seating chart is needed.

Google Calendar (Software Report #2)

Google Calendar allows you to keep track of your appointments, responsibilities, meetings, and life online rather than on paper. Your schedule is available for viewing by day, week, month, or 4-day periods. If you are looking for something specific within your calendar and can’t remember where to find it, you can search by key words. The time of each event is highlighted in red, making it easy to locate. You can create more than one calendar: one for work, your social life, and your child or spouse’s schedule. You can add public calendars to your own in case you want something like all Milwaukee Brewers’ games to show up on your personal calendar.

Every year, my sixth graders are given assignment notebooks at the beginning of the year. Many of the kids either lose their assignment notebook or completely deface it at some point during the year. Rather than having to purchase a new assignment notebook, they could use Google Calendar as a replacement for their missing or destroyed assignment notebook.

As teachers, Google Calendar could be used to keep track of the district calendar, the school calendar, and grade level calendars. What a great way for everyone in a school or district to be on the same page by making all relevant calendars public. With the help of Google Calendar, we would never have to wonder again who was using the gym when, or when the next band concert was taking place, or if the next staff meeting was coming up next week. It would all be right at our fingertips.

TeacherTube (Software Report #1)

TeacherTube serves as an online community designed for sharing teacher resources worldwide. The site allows you to search and watch educationally relevant videos from slideshows to lesson plans to student projects and everything in between. Teachers can also upload their own video resources for others to watch and borrow. The videos can be shown straight from the site or can be embedded into other presentations. You can comment on the videos to provide insight into how you may use them, tag videos to make them easy to locate, rate videos on 1-5 scale, or even bookmark them.

TeacherTube can be used as a tool to share all the hard work we do as teachers each and every day. We are always saying, “Don’t reinvent the wheel,” and this site provides a perfect opportunity to follow that rule. If someone else has already spent the time to create it, why not borrow it or adapt it for my own needs? Or why not use something small like this to enhance a lesson you already do? The possibilities of using these videos in the classroom and with our students are endless because the subject matter covered on the site is expanding every second. Teachers are typically very good at sharing because we know how hard everyone works, and TeacherTube is a perfect way to showcase our sharing abilities.

Nineteen Minutes

I just finished reading the book Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. I chose to read it because I had heard from several people that it is a book every teacher should read. As it turns out, this book was about a school shooting that occurred because a young high school student had been bullied his entire life, and how the victims, their families, the community, and even the shooter deal with the aftermath. It tied in alarmingly well with what we have been talking about in class in regards to cyberbullying and teaching appropriate use of the web. The young man in this book was bullied on many different levels: physically, emotionally, verbally, and eventually an email he had written expressing his feelings for a girl he liked fell into the wrong hands and was sent to every inbox of every student in his entire high school. It is frightening and depressing to realize how little control we have over bullying of all kinds. Students complain about being bullied all the time but so much of it is done "behind closed doors" that teachers and schools can only do so much. And now we have "invented" this whole new way of bullying. Not on the bus or in the halls between classes, but on the computer where it is so easy to hide behind what you are really doing. The combination of our class discussions and reading this book made it all the more evident to me how important it is that we try to reach as many of our students as possible in regards to appropriate Internet use and how one mistake (however innocent it may seem) can change the lives of many people.