Educational Technology

So over the last 7 weeks I have been evaluating and testing different web 2.0 education tools.  There has been many different kinds from social bookmarking to aggregated pages.  I think the main thing that I have learned from all of it is that if you are looking to use tools for education they can come from anywhere and be anything.  This really is the great thing about tools like this is that that is what they are tools.  However unlike physical tools that really only have one purpose you can often adjust these digital tools to fit what you need them to be.  Like take twitter for example.  Twitter can be a huge time waster and or just a way to check up on what your favorite celebrity is doing but if you show people the power of twitter and how you can really use it it can become a very powerful learning tool.  Like I said in my previous post I didn't create much content but I did consume quite a bit and if you follow the right people twitter can be a very powerful professional dev

So our assignment this week is to do another vanity search and see if our involvement in this class as changed our digital foot print.  To be honest it has not changed one bit.  The same exact links come up that came up before. The only thing that is a little different is that my youtube channel now has more videos so that is a little more prevalent than it was before but other than that it is the same.  I don't know what to think about this.  I had an okay digital footprint before but I did expect it to change some what as I went through this class.  I guess that it didn't change mostly because I don't create my own content I just read others.  I think if I were a more active producer and not just a consumer that I would have created more of a footprint and it would show up more in the vanity search but as of now I still don't have much of a footprint and it has not changed much in the last 7 weeks. 

How will I continue to grow in web 2.0 I think the best way to continue to grow with web 2.0 tools is the use of collaboration with peers then not being timid about using the technology.  I think one of the most valuable things that I have learned in this class was that twitter is a valuable tool to be used for collaboration.  If you can join groups on twitter or follow hash tags that can lead your to good tools to use in your classroom wither it is technology or not that is a great use of web 2.0 tools. That I think is something I will always be trying to so to use web 2.0 tools to find other tools that I can use not only technology but also just ideas in general for my classroom. Now for the actual teaching part while using these tools. I have a magnet that is on the front of my desk that says "Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time." - Hebrew Proverb. I don't really know where I got it but I think that is applies so much