Uses of web 2.0 technologies within a classroom

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Permalink Reply by Christine Redman on December 2, 2009 at 10:53pm

HI Jesse
I offer this for your consideration - I think for science learning Web 2.0 technologies are great contributors... think about the strengths and weaknesses of each Web 2 perhaps through the perspective of how they support student's 'voice and choice' - that is how they support communication of and between students, and how they assist clarification of the science learning points of student's needs and interests. So that students have some sense that the learning is also responsive to their needs and interests. I have used this sort of sequence - blogging to support initial engagement and involvement as a tentative exploratory entry point, tag - clouds to see where the points of interest are, and are not and then Wiki's to create shared working spaces, and then any presentation tool to disperse and share the discovers/aspects of interest.
Hope that is of interest and perhaps use.
Cheers
Christine Redman

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Permalink Reply by bjoernlasse on December 5, 2009 at 11:27pm

Jesse, web 2.0 technology was really a marketing buzz word to help the internet industry to get through their economical struggle. If you have a certain problem set in your classroom - for example writing essays - then blogs can be a helpful tool to push motivation and engage students into discussions. I think if you choose some relevant cases and examine how technology helped to improve the respective outcome you can get get some interesting results.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Zimmer on December 6, 2009 at 8:58am

You can visit my blog: http://edutechintegration.blogspot.com

I post Web 2.0 software and attach lesson ideas for them as well. It is just good to remember that with Web 2.0 you are giving your students a chance to share what they have learned with the rest of the world, as well as get feedback from people.

We had students use www.piclits.com to type poems. Students posted and then they were getting feedback and compliments from complete strangers on their poems. Find me a Peer Review session in the classroom that can do that

Use http://edu.glogster.com for your students to create digital posterboards and then share those. It makes a great way for students to share a posterboard with more than other students in the school when you tape them to the wall in your classroom.

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Permalink Reply by suehellman on December 6, 2009 at 9:49am

Hi Jesse -- There are several ways that I can think of to come at this problem.

*First, you can start from the "lesson makeover" point of view and look at your regular curriculum for places to add web 2.0 tools to what you already do. For example, if you normally have students do a poster, try edu-gloster. If you want to post problems or questions and have students respond, try Voicthread. If you want students to develop review tools, try Quizlet. If you want students to summarise findings, try ToonDoo.

*Next if you want to differentiate your own learning materials, you can develop lesson tools and put them online where students can access them 24/7.

*If you want to give your program more of an overhaul, it makes more sense to get into student blogging or wikiing. One of the most interesting ideas I've come across is Wiki Wednesdays, where students pursue science problems they are interested in and do independent research studies.

*Finally there are plenty of global science projects your students can join and contribute to real research and data bases -- in effect becoming scientists.

I think if this is for action research, where you need to start is with a question of what kind of change you want to see and how that will be measured, and then think of you you can use the power of the internet to achieve that. Will this add a completely new dimension to your program? Will it give you better way to teach something you or the kids struggle with? Are you going to use it as a way to better differentiate? remediate? Or do you just want to redesign one unit or one lesson and see what happens?

If you'd like to chat more about some of these ideas, I have a Skype id and we can talk, or I have access to an Elluminate account and we can hold an online meeting and brainstorm ideas.

I hope some of these questions will give you a good starting point.

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