Well, even though this is the last night of Teaching With Technology, my Web 2.0 journey certainly does not end here! We presented our projects tonight and I really learned so much from my classmates. Actually, I don't know what I am going to do with my free time when I am not in this class anymore!
For my project, I decided to research the programs Haiku, Yugma, and VYew. As any other virtual classroom, I found these programs very useful for collaborating with students, uploading lesson plans, hosting webinars, and giving students instant feedback. Let's face it, we live in a world of instant gratification. Elementary school is much different today than when I was there! I remember that it would take the teacher such a long time to give us feedback after taking a test or other assessment. Well, with Web 2.0 programs such as Haiku, Yugma and VYew, this doesn't have to be the case, nor will it be! You can set up your virtual classroom to give your students instant feedback through discussions, journals, and blogs. You can also give your students a secure and spam free place to post or send messages. As the teacher, you can write one student or the entire class. On Haiku, you can poll, drill, and examine what your students know. Then, you can sit back and let your computer do the grading! Also on Haiku, a resource library is coming soon! This is a place to share your content or use ready-made content supplied from third party providers.
Overall, I had a wonderful experience taking this class! I loved working with Dr. S. and my fellow peers. Web 2.0 provides us with SO MANY tools to use in the classroom, that the walls of isolation truly are being broken down! Remember, teachers do not have to be in this profession alone. There are so many tools that we can use to collaborate with each other....so let's take advantage of them!!! It would be a hug disservice to both ourselves and our students if we didn't!
Below is the link to my presentation on Slideboom:
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You did a great job with your presentation. I also like how you put the link here, in your blog.
ReplyDeleteI have an idea for what you can do with your newly acquired free time. Since school is almost out and we teachers will have some time to think, we are all fortunate to be ending our teaching with technology class at this time. Now, with all of the new information about Web 2.0 tools and the many ideas offered by our classmates fresh in our minds, we can make some lessons for next year that will have the students thinking that they came back to a different, 21st century, digital school! Let's write this stuff down (Can we still write? Maybe we should use a tool) before we forget our great ideas and fall back in the same routines so that our students really benefit from what we have learned this semester.