Blog #5_2010BP_web2.0tools

Blog #5 Web 2.0 Educational Tools

As an educator, Web 2.0 has opened a whole new world to me. The more I learn about it, the more I do not understand why more people are not using it. It was hard to pick out only three tools to discuss and apply to education.

The first one I want to talk about is found at http://goanimate.com. This is a great site for students to play with animation. It basically has templates and you choose the combination you want. I was playing with it and chose Willy Nelson, carrying a guitar, in the desert and he was singing. The mouth moved as he sang. You could also choose what song to sing.

That is just skimming what can be done with this application. They are adding new things all the time. You can learn how to upload your own images, audio and even change the settings.

I plan to use this with my students for an animation project. This would give my students an idea how animators do their work.

Blog#4_2010_BP_EducationandSocial boomarking

Education and Social 1

Education and Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking on the web has become the thing to do. Rather than bookmarking on one computer, social bookmarking allows for access to your bookmarks no matter what computer you are on. Using social bookmarking in education has also become the thing to do. It offers a wide range of possibilities for the teacher in planning lessons and it offers a wide range of opportunities for the students to learn.

“Del.icio.us was the number one choice of school library media specialists who used social bookmarking tools…”. (Baumbach, 2009, pg.9) Baumbach has a long list of how social bookmarking helps her to assist teachers and students alike in the media center. She also explains how tagging, using keywords, helps to categorize subject areas and generally assists with research.

“…Since we have written social bookmarking into our ninth-grade information literacy skills continuum, all students in that grade will be taught how to use it as part of their research assignments”. (DesRoches, 2007, pg.33) Using social bookmarking in this way teaches students how to use it and apply it to other subject areas, as well.

Inventing ways of using social bookmarking in the classroom is an ongoing task. Another idea is to “…continually add sites to their class del.icio.us account that relate to what they are studying”. (Buffington, 2008, pg.38) By the end of the year, the class would have accumulated

a record of what they studied. The students would feel that they contributed to this record which they could refer to as a reference tool.

Education and Social 2

Art educators could use social bookmarking as a vocabulary tool. “A teacher could show an image to the class, and the students could discuss possible terms to “tag” the image”. (Buffington, 2008, pg.38) Students will learn art terminology and can be linked to a social bookmark. This technique could also be used in any other subject.

Another trend in the use of social bookmarking in art education is the idea of building a unit on a big concept such as community. “Certain students might choose to tag the Web sites of artists who work with the concept of community, others might tag sites related to their local community…”. (Buffington, 2008, pg.307)

Many other uses of social bookmarking are evolving. The more educators become aware of it, the more it will evolve.

Education and Social 3

REFERENCES

Baubach, D. (2009, Winter). Your new bff social bookmarking tools. Florida Media Quarterly,

pg. 9.

Buffington, M. (2008, May). What is web 2.0 and how can it further art education. Art

Art Education, pg.36.

Buffington, M. (2008). Creating and consuming web 2.0 in art education. Computers in the

Schools, vol.25(3-4) pg.303. doi: 10.1080/07380560802365898.

DeRoches, D. (2007, January). All together now. School Library Journal, pg. 33.