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1. Favorite Exercises:
- Podcasts and Videocasts
- Rollyo
- Online Image Creator
- RSS Feeds and Reads
- Google
- Flickr
- Web 2.0 Awards List
2. One of my lifelong learning goals is to always stay on top of new technology. This class has opened my eyes to a vast variety of new teaching tools. Most of these tools I had never even heard of, before taking this course. Even though, I gained a great deal of new information on tools I already had previous knowledge on.
3. I feel that all the information that was discussed in this course was a takeaway. I gained a lot of new information on familiar and unfamiliar topics. This was a great course, jammed packed with useful information. I would not call anything a surprise, though.
4. I, honestly, could not ask for anything else. Everything was straightforward, step-by-step and interesting/useful. The interaction and hands-on aspect of this course, kept my interest throughout.
5. I would love to participate in another discovery program like this in the future.
6. INTERESTING, INFORMATIONAL AND VERY USER-FRIENDLY
The Nings were very interesting and user friendly. Although they are very user friendly, they are almost too plain. I am used to using the more complex social networks like Facebook and Myspace. Student's in today's society are very technologically sound, so Nings might be a little too simple for them and they might get bored using this social network. I could use a Ning to network with other teachers and discuss issues/topics with other teachers. As a teaching tool, I could use a Ning to interact with my students/athletes about classwork or athletics, when outside the classroom.
I had a fun time working with Photostory. This type of technology gives me another option from just using PowerPoint slides. I believe using podcasts and videocasts will enhance student learning and participation in assignments because they will enjoy and take pride in their work.
Before this school year, I was unaware of all the different media resources and had only used YouTube. I have been using YouTube for a few years now. Having access to several media resources is key. There were several times, this school year, where I tried to view or download a particular video for my class and couldn't. A majority of the time this problem was solved by my technology specialist giving me a URL from TeacherTube or another media resource that allowed me to access the same video, but actually get it to play.
Since I am the ISS teacher at my campus I chose to embed a video on Classroom Discipline.
The Awards List is a great tool because it gives you a variety of top rated websites and blogs to use when conducting a search on a topic. All you have to do is choose a category from which your topic falls under, then see which sites have been chosen by other users as top-rated, credible sites to use for your search. Normally, when conducting a search on a topic using Google or Yahoo, you will get all kinds of sites, in which, you can use to conduct your research. This site helps eliminate a great deal of these sites and lets you hone in on useful, top-rated sites. The Awards List can help teachers set parameters for the sites used in their students research. This will help the students quickly find relevant information from quality and useful websites.
From what I can tell, Open Office is a great free-online tool. A "great free-online tool" is its major advantage. If someone does not have Microsoft Office on their computer, they can access Open Office for FREE. After playing around with Open Office, I can see that it gives you a similar look and feel to Microsoft Office. Open Office is also compatible with several different computer hardware and operating systems. The only drawback, I can see, is if the user does not have the Internet to access/download the application. Although I like the idea of Open Office, I don't see any need to use the online tool if you already have Microsoft Office on your computer.
Wow. Rollyo is yet another great application that can save individuals a great deal of time during their research. This is a great tool for teachers to use when assigning a topic for their students to research. I really like Rollyo because the teacher can some what be in control and set limits for students during their research. For my personal use, I created a Rollyo for my sport searches. Here is the link (http://rollyo.com/65andre65/sports/). I like this because it will only search for topics found within the perameters that I have already setup.
