Web+2.0

There is so much one can do with web-based applications in the classroom (providing the school doesn’t block them)! Just going down the list of types of applications on the web 2.0 site could spur great ideas for lesson plans. Here are five applications I looked at and how I would use them in my classroom. One site I was quite impressed with was Prezi. I like the non-linear nature of how their presentations work. I agree with their ad that this makes the information more visually interesting for the audience, in this case my students. I thought the grouping and panning aspects were particularly interesting. This could be used to group characters together within a novel (for example: Dumbledore’s Army from the Harry Potter series) or characters we’ve read over the course of a semester (heroes/villains) and look at what they have in common and what they don’t. Prezi could even be used to make a Venn diagram! I also thought Prezi could be a good tool for students to make visuals to accompany their own presentations. Since the project would be on a web site, it could facilitate more than one student working on it together without necessarily having to be a) physically together to work on it and b) able to work on it at home, even if the computer they have access to didn’t have Power Point or another presentation software on it. While we’re on the subject of collaborative sites, I have used Google Docs for years. I love the idea of having my students share papers with me in this format and giving them dates where I would be going in and reviewing what they have so far, especially on longer papers such as finals, and using the comment feature to make constructive comments on how they could improve their work/where they need to do more research, etc. I also think that Google Docs could be used in the same manner by students as Prezi, though a slideshow would certainly be less dynamic coming from Google Docs, just having both the slideshow and accompanying paper in the same place would be valuable. One site I hadn’t known about before this module and am now quite enamored with is kubbu! What a great risk-free way to have students take practice tests over the material and see if they’re really getting it. I love that they give a free teacher account with thirty associated student accounts. I also like the variety of games you can create for the students to play. I also thought that the ability to create crossword puzzles online was a neat method of assessment and likely much, much easier than trying to put one together oneself on graph paper. I’ve done that and it’s not easy! ClassTools.net has some amazing things to offer as well. There were several organizer sites, but I like that ClassTools is often computer-based and so has moving graphics. One took I really liked from this site was the interactive book. They suggest using it to break down a piece of prose, but I thought it could also be used to illustrate poetry, just add a picture instead of text to one page and give a visual representation for each stanza. Breaking a poem down this way could also give the opportunity to have the students take turns reading the stanza that is on each set of pages. I think this would be much less intimidating than say having to read parts in “Romeo and Juliet.” I certainly will spend more time exploring the Cool Tools for Schools site. I’ve already bookmarked it and am sure I will refer to it often once I am in my own classroom.