Web+2.0

Sean Mundt 11-26-10 Web 2.0 Assignment

The creation of the web has brought about a huge change in our society. Through the years technology has grown significantly. It has given us a broader prospective of how the internet can truly be used. One of the biggest ways it is being used today is through education and in the classrooms today. Through out the 1990’s technology wasn’t really used as much as it is today. I can assure this because when I was in elementary school we had chalk boards and have eventually moved up to white boards but now when I walk into a classroom today I see Smart Boards which is a new technology design to help students learn in many different ways. Web 2.0 has brought about many fascinating ways of teaching and learning new technology within the classroom. One of the tools that I greatly respect is the blogger. A blog is like an electronic personal journal that you can share your thoughts and photos with your family and friends in the world via the web. Blogging has brought great learning initiatives to the classroom. I was able to experience blogging when I was in high school. What our teacher would do is she would give us a reading assignment or would assign a book for us to read and she would make us log onto a certain blog on the internet and make us give our insight and input to what we thought of certain areas within the book. It was a great way of showing how we felt about the book. It also was great because we could freely share what we thought instead of talking about it in class where I’m sure a lot of us were scared to even raise our hand. Blogging would be a great tool to use within a classroom. Like I have said it can help students express freely on what they feel and believe for those who are shy in class and do not tend to raise there hand to often. It’s a just an overall great way to express yourself. I thought it was very helpful when I was able use it in school. I would make this a place for discussions if I used it in the classroom. The next tool I think is great is slide. I was never able to experience slide when I was in school but it seems like a very interesting tool to use within the classroom. I think pictures speak a lot of words in a classroom. I would guess that many students would rather look at a thousand pictures then have to read something. I think showing pictures would be a great way to express the meaning of a certain topic. Say that you were teaching a class on geography. I would show so many pictures of the world to really show my students what we have in this world. Show them what the world is made up of. I took a geography class my first semester of college and my teacher mainly showed us pictures of the world. It really showed me what the world was made of and how many places are so different from each other. It gave me a whole new meaning for the world and the culture of life as well. I would use slide in my class room to show this effect to students and to help them understand the bigger picture of any subject then what words can tell them. I didn’t think much of prezi. I feel that this tool is very similar to PowerPoint but I’m sure its even more advanced. I think this could be a good and bad tool. I think it could become to complicated when using it and it could confuse the user who is more familiar with PowerPoint. It is somewhat of an interesting tool thought because it gives a more advanced idea of the tool and you can create some pretty neat things that could make one of your presentations really cool. In the classroom I would probably give the students a choice to use this tool is they wanted to. I think most of them would be more comfortable with using PowerPoint and would suggest that they should use that first if they were going to become to confused with Prezi but I would let them know of the various amount of features that Prezi can bring to a presentation. Google docs is an amazing tool to use. I don’t think it related to high school and below though. I think Google docs is a better source to be used with the realm of college. I don’t think that students in high school or below really focus on the sharing of web pages or web sources. I don’t think it is as key at the age then it would be in college where your classes are more advanced and you focus on more advanced areas of certain subjects. I probably would not use Google docs within my classroom. I think I would bring to much confusion to the students and would create an even bigger problem. The last tool that I was focused on was pod casting. I’m not a huge fan of pod casting although I love listening to them if I’m interested in a certain topic of something. I never used it growing up in school until recently in college. I so think it’s a great way to introduce technology and to show it to your students. I don’t think I would use it within the classroom. I know that doing it in college it confused me. It was fun but I had a lot of confusion on the fact of making it work and syncing it to what it needed to be. I thinking bringing this to the classroom would make it hard for people. I think many would become very confused and the big issue with pod casting would be on how to make it work and sync right then to actually see how pod casting can change the class room and how you can get people to express themselves. Over this assignment was very interesting. Its crazy to think that technology now has so much influence on society today and in schools as well. I think is a huge leap in educations and really shows how it can help education as well. It’s something that older generations are not used to but have to realize that its becoming a huge part of society today and is giving students a new way to learn in the classroom.


 * Reflection:**


 * I think many of the Web 2.0 tools were fantastic. I would probably only use a selection of them as I explained above. I think that in the classroom many of these tools would really come in handy. Although some of the tools seems to be to complicated to use and could become very confusing within the classroom. The biggest tool that I would use would be the blogger. I think creating the establishment of a blog can bring about what the student is thinking. I would mainly use the blogging tool for reading assignments to see what kinds of reactions I could get out the students and to see what is on their minds and how they feel about the certain topic or subject we are learning about.**