Web+2.0+Essay

Web 2.0 Essay

1. The following is the text of my Web 2.0 essay.

2. I think that this essay is great and I will definately be able to refer back to it in the future when I am a teacher in order to get some new ideas and ways to keep my students engaged in class. All of the five tools that I explored are ways that can make learning much more interesting and interactive for the students than teaching a lesson on its own without any special resources. Although Scrapblog, Arkive, the British Library, Songza, and DebateGraph were my favorite tools that I found on the Web 2.0 database, there were hundreds of others that I would like to continue to explore as my teaching education and experience moves forward.

3. As I have written in my essay, there are numerous ways that I thought about how to incoorporate these Web 2.0 tools into my teaching curriculum. I would be able to incoorporate these tools by helping them to make a scrapbook of their school field trip, exploring and learning about global warming, exploring primary sources for a history class, use music to enhance my history lessons, as well as help my studnets prepare for a debate. With Web 2.0 tools, the possibilities are almost endless.

Teresa Powell July 3, 2012 EDT 3013, Web 2.0 Essay As I work towards becoming a teacher in the 21st century, I realize more and more the importance that technology will continue to have in education. Web 2.0 tools are great resources to incorporate into lesson plans that will get my students excited about using technology in the classroom. It will also probably make my life easier, as many of these websites have resources that help the teacher in addition to students. The five tools that I selected from the Web 2.0 website were Scrapblog, Arkive, the British Library, Songza, and DebateGraph. Scrapblog is a tool that will help students make yearbook or scrapbook projects on activities that took place during the school year. Arkive has numerous images and resources about life on earth that could easily be incorporated into a broad range of lessons. The British Library tool is every helpful, especially for history or English teachers. It has archives of old European texts. Some of them are hundreds of years old. Songza is a resource that not only helps music teachers, but any teacher wanting to incorporate music into their lesson. Any song or artist can simply be searched on the website and Songza will quickly find it so that it can be played in class for students. DebateGraph is a tool that helps students, or any person, structure an argument or debate. They have statistics on all types of information, like population data and geographic conditions. By using this tool, the students can construct an argument with correct and specific facts. They can also see the other side of the argument. Scrapblog, the first Web 2.0 tool that I would like to incorporate into the classroom, would be helpful when students need to create a collection of pictures that have one underlying theme. This would work particularly well with a field trip or class vacation. The students could put together pictures not only of themselves, but also photographs of things that they learned. For example, as an eighth grade student, my class had a “Day in Denver” for my math class. We took pictures of specific buildings to learn about numbers and math in architecture and also attended a Rockies baseball game where we kept score and then found various averages and statistics for the game. By using Scrapblog, students could post pictures of the churches and buildings that were examined as well as moments from the game. Not only would this demonstrate what the students had learned from this field trip, but it would also create a sense of community and friendship within the entire class, as they would all be able to see a fun visual in order to remember the fieldtrip. Unlike Scrapblig, Arkive would probably help more with classroom learning and discovery. After exploring this site, it seems to be an excellent resource for a geography class. For example, there is a large section on global warming that the students can explore. If the class was studying climate change and the environment, this would be a great resource. Students can explore different effects of global warming and even explore what animals these changes effect. It would be a very informative resource that students could use for a project or research paper on a changing Earth. The visuals of the animals are very impressive and colorful so the students can get a strong feel for what changes global warming has already had on the Earth. While Arkive would be an excellent resource for a geography class, the British Library would be a great addition to many world history classes. Because this website has various copies of old documents, books, and pictures, the students would be able to get a firsthand look at how writing and art was created hundreds of years ago. As a future social studies teacher, if I were to do a unit on the Renaissance in Europe, this website would be a great resource. Students could get onto the British library website and explore documents and pictures that were written during this time period. They could then analyze them and make connections about what this time period must have been like. Because the British Library not only has copies of these documents, but actually what the documents themselves looked like, the students would really be able to get a feel of the Renaissance as they could actually see the style and type of paper that the students would have used. Songza, like Arkive, would be a great resource for a history class. Songza allows anyone to search music, songs, and artists. The website has millions of songs that can be accessed in seconds. This website could help to enhance my history lessons in numerous ways. For example, in one of my education classes I created a lesson plan on the 1920’s in America. The students would have to compare the modern music of today with a sample of music from the 1920’s. They would then analyze music from both time periods in order to understand more about what were major issues and concerns in the 1920’s, as well as today. With Songza, it would only take a couple of minutes to compile a playlist from both time periods and my students would quickly be able to begin analyzing the music. DebateGraph, perhaps one of the most interesting Web 2.0 programs, would be helpful in many areas of social studies. It would help with in class debates as well as helping students to simply construct an argument. For example, if my students were doing a debate on gun control in the United States, they would have a large array of resources they could pull from the site, including statistics and examples, to use in their debate. This site would also help them ensure that their argument was fair and balanced, as it allows students to research both sides of an issue.