Web 2.0 Applications

Glogster:

I have heard many things about Glogster and have seen some students use it for projects. However, I never experienced using it first hand. Here are somethings I encountered:

• I really love the overall look of the Glog. It's very engaging and eye catching. The graphics and text are great. The finish project looks awesome!
• However, for me, it wasn't very user friendly. I would click on something to type and it would move the object. Or I would double click and some other application would pop up. I got frustrated with everything moving around. I realized you can lock things into place, but not until I pulled some hair out!

I'd really like to know how kids work with Glogster. I'd love to use it for some sort of project but am unsure how I'd use it. I know it is something that would have to be taught and I'm not an expert...yet!

Here is a Glog I created on Probability!

Pintrest:

I absolutely LOVE Pinterest!

I could spend hours and hours going through classroom photos. There are so many ideas out there I'd love to try. And there are so many teachers will and able to share their wonderful ideas.

I've never been big on "pinning" things (partially because I wouldn't have time for anything else!), but I've started some classroom ideas. Click this link for some of my pins!

Google Drive:

Google Drive is amazing!

I was really lucky to have a technology nerd as my mentor teacher throughout my student teaching experience. He is a Google Drive expert, and his students learned to use Google Drive from day 1.

I used Google Drive in many different subjects and in many different capacities. We used it to type up papers, create presentations, and used Forms to take quizzes. It's a great way for students to learn technology all in one place!

Here a rubric I created to grade a persuasive letter in a business letter format that the students did. I just created a table and was able to formulate a rubric. Click this!

I will ALWAYS use Google Drive!

Feedly:

I found using Feedly confusing and overwhelming. I understand the concept of RSS feeds, but I found that I wasn't able to subscribe to any feeds I wanted to. Also, I was unable to find an RSS feed on the websites I wanted to subscribe to.

I like the concept of having a place where all the relevant information I want to see is in one place, kind of like Twitter. However, I feel like this is one application that I won't be using very often and one that I don't have the time to take to learn how.

I think it is important to have a personal learning network, a place to be connected to other teachers. I think there are plenty of places to share ideas and experiences out there already that are more user friendly. I find that my teacher friends are sharing ideas throughout simpler social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, even through email!

Wiki:

I had never heard of Wiki before now, but it's great! I'm still playing around with it, but I love that its a place where you can communicate to your students. It reminds me a lot of Edmodo. I like that you can have conversations with other members of the group. It's great that you can post events like quizzes, tests, or projects. It's also cool that you can assign and use projects. It's very interactive, and I like that!

There are still somethings that I'm exploring, but it is definitely something I'll consider using to keep in contact with my students. Here's my Wiki link! I'd appreciate any tips for using it!

Photo Peach:

When I first started looking through Photo Peach, I was unsure how it would go. But I really like some of the things you can do with it. It would be a great tool for students to use to create projects. I'd love to see how they would respond to using it. I played around with it and created a short presentation on Rocks!

Create a Graph:

There are so many different types of tools out there to use, but I liked playing around with Create a Graph. Being a potential math teacher, I thought it might be a good tool for my students. It is a pretty great way to create different types of graphs for projects. I think it would be an easy tool for my students to pick up and a great asset to a project. Originally, I thought it might be a great tool for teaching graphs, but it is more just plugging in the data and creating a graph to use somewhere else. It would be a great way to reinforce using graphs after a lesson!

Exploring Blogs:

I really enjoyed looking at other blogs that have been done. There are so many creative people out there coming up with very innovative ideas. I found some to have a impeccable grasp on technology and others who were like me, figuring things out as they go along. Here are a few I really enjoyed looking at:

Emily Clark - http://legoscriboque.blogspot.com/

Erika Lunsford - http://hsenglish13.blogspot.com

Sharla Williams - WilliamsWorld817.blogspot.com