Web 2.0 Tools
With reports finished I have been trying to catch up on my RSS feeds and investigating other bits and pieces which I’ve bookmarked.
I have been wandering around the Time4 Online Conference site and ended up at the conference wiki. This wiki would be a great starting point for new teachers to Web 2.0 tools. There are a couple of pages showing teachers what they can do with video and slideshows. I’m even going to point my students in that direction.
Then I read a post from Chrissy at Teaching Sagittarian. She was commenting on the number of new tools available to us.
I’ve been trying loads of new things this year. YackPack, VoiceThread, TiddlyWiki, Wikispaces, CamStudio, FreeMind, Google MyMaps, Scratch, Splashcast, to name a few – and believe me – the list goes on! That also got me thinking – well …. no ….. better than that ….. it actually got me reflecting.
Just how effectively have I been using or teaching my students to use, these awesome new tools? One of her students commented, …… there’s so much going on, and we’re doing so much, we don’t have time to do it very well.
If I’m really honest with myself ….. it’s pretty much the same for me with all these new things too. So I am going to take up the challenge to try something new each week – I’m just going to take it in a different direction.
I’m going to take one of those new things I’ve tried so far ….. and I’m going to do something with it ……. better!
I share Chrissy’s sentiments but I think I need more hours in the day or …. This is something I need to discuss with my students as we seem to doing bits of everything and really need to have a more focused approach to using these exciting possibilities. I’ll be watching Chrissy’s progress and hopefully will gain something from her journey.
After beginning by linking to a host of Web 2.0 tools and then reflecting on Chrissy’s post I’m finishing this by saying that we need to take great care that we don’t overwhelm newbies to this Web 2.0 journey.
