Web 2.0 Teaching Tools - A Selected Exploration

Greetings fellow readers!

For this post, I am going to explore some web-based tech tools which I've found (or hope to some day find) useful for my classroom. Perhaps you've heard of some or all of them, and perhaps not. Either way, I hope these quick reviews are helpful to those who can use them. As always, feel free to comment below - I'm especially interested in hearing perspectives, pro/cons, etc that differ from my own!

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This resource can be used by students to create chronological timelines. There are many other resources that can do this (eg Timeline, Time Toast), so what make this one special? The ability to zoom for detail. Using this tool allows the user to create a basic, "biggest picture" timeline which only shows the important details/events by time. These would show up at zoom level 0. However, they can include further details on zoom levels up to 100. So, zoom level 0 would show the biggest, general picture, while zoom level 100 would show the tiniest, more trivial details - and everything in-between can be specified for zoom levels between 0-100.

This tool can help students organize their learning of a topic in virtually any subject area.

However, the more exciting, hidden skill that this tool can nurture is......*drum roll*......Summarization!

By examining their material and prioritizing it based on zoom level, students are implicitly refining their ability to rank their information by importance. In doing so, they will develop a keener eye for the gray area of creating a summary. Students often ask "how much is too much? Ho w little is not enough?". This tool can help give them the instincts they need to answer such questions.

you can find this tool at www.timeglider.com

Also, here is a video that demonstrates its inner workings:

Admittedly, this is a popular one - and for good reason. I've spent many a night searching for "that perfect video" on youtube, sometimes successfully but more often not. Youtube is simply too general, and, while you can find good stuff there, you may have to sift through a considerable list of off-topic, irrelevant search results until you find what you're looking for. With Teacher Tube, search results yield exclusively educational material - much of which is not even posted to YouTube. This tool also offers photos, audio clips, and documents as searchable items. As a Science teacher, I've found the use of video to be essential to my classroom. Science can be boring on paper, yet beautiful when visualized. It can be complicated on paper, yet obvious when demonstrated on screen.

 A concept such as diffusion can sound cumbersome by definition. "Listen class, it's simply the movement of chemicals from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration". This is the definition, and yet many student will furrow their brows in confusion when presented with this information verbally (or on paper). But, if they're shown a video like below, the figurative light bulbs often turn right on:

Of course, a hands-on demonstration also works well, but we don't always have the time or resources available to make that happen in every circumstance.

Finally, this tool also fosters the idea of sharing. It might be a good idea to create a rule that, if we're going to use Teacher Tube, we must contribute to it. A group assignment/project could be arranged (cross-curricular at that) involving the creation of an imaginative piece of media to share with the world via Teacher Tube or any related tool!

This tool has become more popular with my students in recent years as an alternative to MS Powerpoint (PPT). While, on the whole, it accomplishes the same basic goal as PPT, it has some appealing differences. First of all, it's "hip" - it provides the user with the chance to inject new forms of creativity into their presentations. By allowing the user the freedom to play with different level of zoom, rotation, and panning, for example, presentations can provide a feeling of spontaneity and adventure (all the while being covertly linear). Visual learners love this tool, and likely feel constrained by MS PowerPoint or Keynote (the Apple equivalent) and their relatively restricted (dare I say) old fashioned modes of presentation. Personally I'm still satisfied with PowerPoint, but I can't expect the same from my students any more than I can expect them to appreciate, say, 8-bit video games or the music of the 90s.

Prezi can be used for free IF the user is comfortable with their work being publicly available. To use this program on a stand-alone, private basis, the user must purchase a license.

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And so ends this exploration - I hope you enjoyed it, and find use with the above in some professional capacity. For a list of many, many, MANY more potential classroom tech tools, check this out:

http://edjudo.com/web-2-0-teaching-tools-links