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 ...

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...

Social bookmarking? So this week we are looking at the idea of social bookmarking.  At first glance I thought this was a cool idea.  I am always wondering if there are better articles out there for a subject than just the ones that you can google first.  I think this could be a way to get past the first page of googling and get to some more interesting article.  The website that we are using is called Diigo.  Basically you get on there set up an account with them and then you can start bookmarking articles that you would like to read later or whatever.  The free version that you get has some limitations but is really not that bad.  there is also a free for educators version that has less limitations and would really be useful to help students start a research project because the real advantage to a site like Diigo is that you can make groups.  You can set up your own group or you can join another group that is already set up.  There are all...

Aggregating Pages  So this week we were assigned to study and set up an aggregating page. The first thing that I did was to look up on google to find out what aggregating pages are.  The first link that pops up is a article that talks about the 6 top aggregating pages. I looked at a few different websites that were in the article that allowed you to set up aggregated pages for yourself. I looked at alltop  and popurls  among others.  After looking at those I then went back to my google search and looked at the wikipedia article.  The wikipedia article talked about several different types of pages aggregators.  The first one is a news aggregator.  In other words it seems like a aggregator is really just a way to put a lot of links to information that you would like to see all at once on one page.  I looked really handy for a start up page and you would be able to quickly see what was going on with the most important things on the internet f...

Youtube has always been my favorite way to learn a new skill.  You can learn just about anything on youtube.  If you want to know how to change your brakes on your car for instance you can just type your model and make of your car and how the change the brakes and the probably have a video on how to do it.  Like this for example. Or say you wanted to learn how to throw a boomerang the right way so that it will come back to you. Or some of my personal how do you build a rocket powered golf club? There is a whole slew of videos that you can watch out there some of them are completely useless but if you are careful you can find some real gems that are not only educational but also fun at the same time. Youtube for me has always been a go to if I have a student that was absent in a class and they need to catch up I usually try to send them to a youtube video that they can watch that will catch them up at least a little and then I try to fill in the gaps as...

                    Twitter to me has always been the most useful of the social media sites.  The idea that you can broadcast your thoughts and just about anyone could read them and easily search for them i think is a very powerful platform.  If you wanted to find ideas to help you out on a subject you can usually find someone on twitter willing to help you.  You can also find people that have your same interest really quickly and connect to people who share your same principles.  I truly is an online community.  I think that it is amazing way to collaborate with your peers.  However, I have many reservations using twitter as a way of communicating with students from a teacher perspective.  I think it probably comes from the content that I teach as well.  Being a physics teacher the most useful thing about twitter or an other form of outside the class communication is the ability to help students w...