Web 2.0 Tools

The category of Web 2.0 tools seems to be expanding on a daily basis. Although only my second year of teaching, I find it easy to integrate Web 2.0 tools into the classroom on a pretty regular basis. I think students should have access and I also believe utilizing those tools in the classroom create a well rounded student who is able to not only perform research on their own but has general knowledge on how to navigate the various aspects of the internet and educational websites.

I enjoy using Wordle to introduce new units into my classroom. I also like using Wordle when it comes to vocabulary words. I think it's a great visual for students to see the words and try to guess how they will be used in the unit as opposed to just listing and defining them. Students also enjoy creating Wordles for various activities. It's an engaging way to look at word choice in essays and to self-check for redundancy. Students in my Pre-AP classes are able to use it to enhance the word choice of their essays. It allows them to see which words are possibly overused, then expands their knowledge as most of them refer to a thesaurus to find synonyms for their words they have overused.

I also enjoy utilizing online blogging. Many of my students have blogger accounts, and I was able to create a classroom blogger. I have several blogs posted during the week and students are able to begin discussions, post links to additional websites as sources for the information we are going over, and generally just speak about the information being learned in class. I have also used it to expand student knowledge on current events, especially those in the literary field such as new writers emerging, books that have come out, etc. Students have responded quite enthusiastically to the chance to participate in a 100% online forum, which is exciting to be a part of.

In the future, I believe I will be making the switch to GoogleDrive as opposed to Drop Box. GoogleDrive seems a bit easier for students as so many of them have Google and Gmail accounts already. I am going to keep both GoogleDrive and Drop Box as I want to be sure all students are able to reach me when using an online resource. I also plan to begin using Class Dojo. Our Spring Semester has yet to start, so it will be implemented at the start of the new semester. I believe this will be a great visual tool for students to see how their behaviors in class are negatively or positively affecting the learning environment. I also have been enjoying ePals and would like to build a unit or several around the use of understanding another culture and using that in writing. I believe using ePals for a poetry unit would be interesting as it would be fun to compare poetry in our classroom to that of another country.