Oh Web 2.0 tools  . . . there are so many out there that you will never be able to try them all. To give you a leg up, we all shared our favorite Web 2.0 tools. Listed below are all of the tools that were shared. Please note that all of these sites have also been tagged in delicious with the tag: fcsd_web2.0. If you find other web tools in your Internet travels that you would like to share, make sure to tag the site in delicious with the tag: fcsd_web2.0. The RSS feed in the right column of this blog will automatically repopulate with any new sites with the fcsd_web2.0 tag. If you have any questions how to properly tag sites in delicious just send me a chat!

• Travis: http://quietube.com/
  • Removes all ads and comments from a Youtube video.
  • Kat also shared a similar site: safeshare.tv
• Erin: http://www.kisstunes.com/
  • Allows students to compose music, would be great with a smartboard.
  • Erin also shared: http://mitto.com/. Keeps your usernames and passwords in one place.
• Eric: http://etherpad.com/
  • Eric is using it to connect with another classroom on a Flat Stanley project.
• Dennis: Audio Drop Box
  • Embeds an Audio Recorder to his wiki so his students can record and submit their recordings to him.
• Jeff: http://www.chestercomix.com/
  • A good source of cartoons that Jeff uses as a warm up in class.
  • Jeff also shared: http://www.pikikids.com/. Has his students use this site to create their own political cartoons and comics.
• Mike: http://fultonhistory.com/
  • Allows you to look up articles from old newspapers, great for local history. Mike and his students used it to looked up the Wegmans gas fire.
• Kristin: http://www.kidzui.com/
  • Internet portal for kids – includes tv channels, images, videos, etc
• Meghan: http://www.googlelittrips.org/
  • Supplement to literature using Google Earth files, don’t just read about the trip across the country in Grapes of Wrath, actually see it.
• Jean: http://tweentribune.com/
  • Allows kids to read news stories that matter to them and post their comments. Teachers can sign up for an account and assign their students articles to read.
• Chris: Harvard Business Idea Casts
  • Podcasts about certain ideas. Each podcast focuses around one idea so you listen to that podcast if it interests you.
• Steve: http://www.kickstarter.com/
  • Online fundraiser website. You start a project, set a goal, and people can pledge to fund your goal.
• Kat: http://www.donorschoose.org/
  • Similar to Steve’s site, you can set up a fund raising goal and have people pledge to fund the goal.
• Maura: http://animoto.com/
  • Upload your photos, select your music,  and Animoto will create a video of the two. Maura had her kids use Animoto to create anti-bullying campaigns.
• Brian: http://www.diigo.com/
  • Similar to delicious, but diigo allows you to highlight the website so you know the important parts when you come back to it.
• Shelley: http://zapreader.com/
  • Paste a link to a website or article in zapreader and you can set how fast you will read the text. Zapreader then gives you a the words of the article at the pace you set for yourself.
• Bret: Decided web tools were like his children and he couldn’t pick a favorite
  • Google music search: http://www.google.com. Search for an artist or a song and Google search will give you the music results
  • http://www.instructables.com/ – Learn how to do things/build things like how to make your own energy source or how to make a cheap analogy pressure sensor.
  • http://makezine.com – Do it yourself technology.
  • http://www.stumbleupon.com/ – Discover great websites and favorite them so stumbleupon knows your personal preferences for better searching.
  • http://allrecipes.com/ – Look up recipes that other users have tried and rated.

Is your classroom technology vision reflective of more than a bubble that will inevitably pop?

Reflections. Sometimes blinding, sometimes enlightening. We oft ask students to reflect upon their learning.  How often do we contemplate where we’ve come from?  How often do we ponder our own learning as educators?

As the district moves forward with the hardware, software and infrastructure to make the TVT Vision a reality for the Fairport school community, think about how far it has come from since TVT began 2.5 years ago.  There was a plethora of software titles, slow network connections, ethernet nests, and computers the age of intermediate students. The mere mention of blogs, wikis and podcasts elicited deer in headlights stares.

Now, blogs are sprouting up at all levels K-12, wikis are being collaboratively built by students, grade level teams, departments and administrative committees.  Podcasts are being planned, written, recorded and shared with the wider community on the Internet.  Music classes are looking to perform and learn from each other through video conferencing.  Classrooms are opening up to the larger community through live streaming video. Students are becoming producers of knowledge. Yet, this is only the beginning…

Last week, the TVT team convened and continues to consider learning technologies to share this spring as examples of transforming teaching and learning through technology.  In advance of embarking on this endeavor,  it may be worthwhile to take a few minutes and review the 8 main areas of the Vision and comment on the questions that follow at the end of this post.

Details	last edit Jan 29, 2009 7:17 pm by bcsmith – 3 revisions
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1. Be taught to be technologically literate from the very beginning of their education.

2. Have opportunities to engage with literacy in 21st century mediums.

3. Have a safe and protected environment which minimizes the risk of encountering dangerous people and inappropriate content.

4. Utilize technology in ways that makes learning purposeful and real.

5. Have opportunities to collaborate with others that cross time and space.

6. Have access to current software/hardware that meet their diverse learning styles.

7. Value and respect the social impact and ethical issues regarding technology.

8. Experience technology as an interdisciplinary tool

Reflect on this… how do you perceive your role as a TVT member?  Is it merely a bubble in time?  Will it pop or will it live on in your teaching and learning like the Olympic Torch?  What are you doing to ensure a transformation of learning through technology?

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/istargazer/848218756/sizes/s/#cc_license

We have been looking at the new genre of 10″ laptops and/or netbooks for students in the K-2 classrooms. Specifically teachers and students at Jefferson Ave, Brooks Hill and Dudley, led by TVT members, have the opportunity to review samples of these laptops to determine what the key considerations are for a suitable laptop that will meet the ergonomic and motor skill needs of our younger students.

My class and I were very excited to have the ipod touch in our room. However, I did not use it to it’s full potential as I was planning to. Now most of that is due to me and not putting it to the top of my list and figuring out how to use it in my everyday teaching. I did enjoy looking through math, history and grammar apps for the students to play around with. I need to do more research and looking around for books that I can download to the ipod for my students to enjoy. I hope that I can have it again at some point this year to play around with it more. My students did enjoy just playing around with it, practicing their facts and playing some games. It was a great motivator in our room!

Just a quick post to share some online resources for using the iPod Touch for learning…

• IEAR
• IEAR Community
• iPhone & iPod Touch Group on Diigo

Here’s a link to the beginning of my review of the iPod Touch Experiment in the classroom.  I’ll be wrapping it up shortly.

The power of real world audiences can not be under estimated for enhancing the learning of students.  There are many web broadcasting tools available to provide access to a safe real world audience.  The TVT group will take a look at the following tools and share their thoughts.

Ustream

Podium

vyew

These groups will brainstorm list of possible instructional applications and rank most favorite to least favorite application,

Body language is an important aspect of communication.  This can be challenging when using text chats or emails.  The new laptops for our school come with built in video cameras.  Our TVT group is exploring the peer 2 peer tools that we will consider for the K-12 staff oin 2010-11.  The comments to this post captures their reflections and ranking of the following tools:

• Skype
• GTalk
• Mebeam
• TinyChat

Today we are reviewing some of our favorite Web 2.0 tools. We broke up into four groups: K-3, 4-6, 7-8, and 9-12.  Thegroups are posting their links on their comments to this posting.  Some of these will be used in the 2010-11 TVT groups.

I was one of the lucky ones who got to experiment with the ipod.  Since I don’t have a class to practice with, I played around with Apps that were free and checked out the eReader feature.

eReader Thoughts: 

I found the ipod a bit small for reading.  I also made the mistake of trying it while riding in a car.  This was not a great idea since a headache and nausea quickly followed. I also may have found it more successful if I could have found something I liked to read to download.

Apps I discovered:

I found some really cool apps.  The frustration was not being able to purchase ones that I thought would be really helpful resources to use with students.  I did take a look at Capitals and ShakeEm Up.  Both of these apps dealt with state capitals.  I loved ShakeEm Up.  You actually shook the ipod to go on to the next state where it highlighted a map of the US.

I thought Clockmaster would be good to use with students who are learning the hour, 15, 30 and 45 after.

 Quick Mind was a math app where student were given an number and had to figure out how to combine numbers and operations to get to the sum of the number

 My Baby Life would be great to use with students taking human development or biology.  It actually shows you what the fetus looks like during the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd trimester and then tells you what the mother’s body is going through.  For an additional cost, this app goes more in depth.

 I know people are concerned with loosing the ipods, etc., but with proper instruction and expectations, I think these could be great resources to enhance and reinforce basic skills.