Final Reflections

Final Reflections

Before I discovered this course last August, I'll admit that I didn’t even know what Web 2.0 was. I had a Facebook account that I rarely used and was familiar with YouTube, but I wasn’t aware that I was actually using Web 2.0 tools. The last few months have been very enlightening as I have discovered various Web 2.0 technologies and learned how to use them in both my personal and professional lives. I have discovered a whole new world where I can connect with others both near and far; together we have begun a dialogue and are learning from each other’s unique perspectives.

The children we are teaching in our schools are digital citizens who will grow up and enter the workplace, a world where they will need to know how to find, retrieve, and manage information in an efficient manner. They will need good communication skills as they will be expected to work collaboratively with others in virtual environments (Richardson, 2009). As educators, it is our responsibility to equip our students with these skills that will serve them throughout their lives.

Following are a few of the highlights I experienced in learning about Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 Highlights

French Resources

As I learned about each new tool, I thought about its application to teaching French as a Second Language. I’ve found social bookmarking sites like Delicious to be a valuable resource of French websites. I’ve bookmarked some of my own and found good ones that others have bookmarked. The TumbleBooks site was a wonderful discovery; through the public library, a growing number of animated French ebooks are available. Podcasting is a tool I can use to work on my own French language skills; I was unable to find any that I would use with my Grade 3 students, but I’ll keep looking. Creating podcasts of French stories and downloading them onto CDs would be an excellent way to narrate stories for the kids to read along with at home or at school. With the technical difficulties I experienced with podcasting, I’ll need to spend some more time learning how to use this tool. Once I have mastered it, I would like to have my students make podcasts of them reading books in French to post on our classroom blog or in an e-portfolio.

Multi-media sharing sites like Voicethread provide another opportunity for French learners to practice their language skills. Students can make digital stories such as the one done by Joanne’s son who wrote a French story about Halloween. The teacher uploaded pictures of each page, and her son narrated the story in French.

Managing Information Overload

This was one of my inquiry questions at the beginning of the course – how to manage the overwhelming amount of information on the Internet in terms of finding what I need in an efficient manner. I’ve come a long way in the last three months. Gone is the long list of bookmarked sites in my Favourites that I was previously using and hadn’t even organized into folders. I’m now bookmarking sites in Delicious on a regular basis and tagging them with words that make them easy to access. In Google Reader I’m using folders to organize my RSS feeds. My school email is much more organized as well and I try to stick to the "one touch" policy. I try to file memos into folders as soon as I get them and can retrieve things I need much more efficiently. I rarely print memos now that I can find them so easily online, so I’m saving some trees. On my bookmarks menu at school, I keep my most frequently used sites, such as Attendance, email, and my Classroom Blog. I use iGoogle as my homepage at home so I can quickly see feeds into Google Reader, check the weather, and use gadgets like the Translator.

Reading Online

In the Read/Write Web classroom, it’s not as essential to know what the answer is as it is to know where to find it (Richardson, 2009). I’ve learned how to search and read better online to find the information that’s most relevant to me. I can narrow down searches by choosing the right key words and I can skim and scan to find the important information. The skills I’ve learned in reading more critically online will prepare me for the task of teaching my students to do so as well. Anyone can publish on the Internet without prior review, so it’s important that my students learn how to evaluate who and what they’re reading to determine validity. They will also need to be taught literacies regarding communication skills in order to function in the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 (Richardson, 2009).

New Connections

Web 2.0 tools have enabled me to become more connected to educators, parents, friends and family. Teaching is no longer an isolating experience. Now I can connect with other educators around the world in nings like Classroom 2.0, read and respond to edblogs, follow other teachers on Twitter, or watch/listen to podcasts of what others are doing with their students. I can participate in Elluminate sessions with experts in the field of technology in the classroom. These connections provide a wealth of information about using Web 2.0 tools with my students and great ideas for enriching the curriculum I’m teaching in every subject.

My Blogs

This course has offered me the opportunity to establish a presence online in a number of spaces, but my blogs are the ones I identify with the most. The confidence and knowledge I’ve gained in using blogs during this course has led to the development of my classroom blog. Our classroom blog will provide my students with the opportunity to participate in the Read/Write Web and in so doing, develop their digital literacy skills. Providing them with a wider interactive audience that gives feedback makes the writing process much more motivating and engaging for students. It’s “multimodal” nature of incorporating text, sound, and images works well with visual and auditory learners.

The creativity involved in blogging is very appealing to me. I enjoy personalizing them with colour, images, and the many different widgets that are available. the key is to make them visually appealing and user-friendly for my readers. I’m sure my students will also enjoy creating their own personal online spaces.

Group Discussions

The group discussions were a great opportunity to expand my knowledge of Web 2.0 and to support each other along the way. The questions we discussed every other week really lead me to think deeply about relevant Web 2.0 issues. I found the discussions interesting and they deepened my understanding of Web 2.0 and my role in it. We all had different inquiry questions, so our discussions provided many different perspectives on the week's topics.

Thank you to Lisa who was a wonderful resource for “how to” questions such as how to do screen shots and how to research ejournals at the University of Alberta. Her instructions were clear and very easy to follow. Thanks also to Tyson who had some great teaching ideas to offer, like using the writing process to write better blog posts and modeling reading and researching online with students. They both introduced me to digital textbooks, a term I had never heard of before. These discussions lead me to delve deeper into different subjects and gain a deeper understanding of them, not only from my own research, but from theirs and the links they provided. I also learned a lot from reading their blogs and my own blogging style was influenced by theirs. They provided encouraging comments on my blog and kept me thinking with all of their great questions.

The Dimmer Lights

Web 2.0 technologies and learning how to use them hasn’t always been easy. Here are some of the challenges I experienced throughout the course.

Time Consuming

Learning all of these Web 2.0 tools over a short period of time has been a steep learning curve for me. Many of the tools were fairly easy to learn, but some of them took some time to figure out (podcasting for example). At times, it felt as though I had a part-time job on top of my full-time teaching job, with all of the material we covered over the last three months. Playing with the tools was fun, but the reading, researching and writing that was involved was a real challenge for me. I almost quit the course three weeks into it as I was overwhelmed with all of the new technology I had to learn, coupled with my class of very demanding Grade 3 students. I stuck with it because I was learning so much about Web 2.0 and was finding it very interesting. It gave me something new and exciting to focus on and begin using in my classroom.

Filtering and Safety Issues

I encountered problems at school in accessing some of these Web 2.0 tools because of filtering by the school division. For example, I can’t get video sites like YouTube, Google Video, Explore.org or Watchknow. I am able to access TeacherTube, but so far I’m not very impressed with the selection at the site. I could try asking the Division for a password to access some of these restricted sites and embed videos into my classroom blog to share with my students. However, there are other ways to access videos. For example, I showed my Grade threes a CBC video about Rick Mercer bear tagging in Algonquin Park and a video I found on how to wash your hands properly. Flickr was another site that I couldn’t use at school easily. I managed to access it through an email with a link to Flickr. The kids really enjoyed looking at the images of plants and selecting some to put in our Plant Gallery.

Educating children and young people in internet safety is likely to be far more effective if real experience is provided rather than the alternative of applying blocks, filters, and other controls – or avoiding online activity altogether on account of its perceived danger (Davies and Merchant 2009). I agree whole-heartedly with this statement. Supervision of students while on the Internet is very important, but we also need to teach them how to use it in a responsible manner. They are going to be using sites like Facebook and YouTube at home often without adult supervision, so they need to learn proper “netiquette” for interacting with people online and how to protect themselves from inappropriate content and people they encounter. By filtering these sites in schools, students are not learning how to use them responsibly. Educational nings or virtual learning environments such as Moodle, which school divisions allow, offer a way for teachers to get around the filtering issues and allow them to teach students how to interact with others in a socially responsible manner. Hopefully this will carry over into their use of the social networking sites they are using at home.

Where do I go from here?

Personal Learning Network

Thanks to this course, I am now connected with my very own online Personal Learning Network! I have my course blog which I will refer to time and again as I continue to explore Web 2.0 technologies and endeavor to use them in my teaching. My classroom blog is in its infancy and I am excited to see how it will evolve as I begin to involve my students in creating its content. Google Reader will become a regular part of my day where I will keep up-to-date with the various education bloggers whose feeds I subscribe to. I am a member of the Ning, Classroom 2.0, and will continue to participate in the ongoing dialogue found there. I look forward to listening to and participating in the Classroom 2.0 Live Elluminate sessions on Saturday mornings when I'll have more time to do so come January.

Smart Technology

A smart board has finally arrived at our school, and I have to admit that I’m envious of the lucky teacher who received it. Now that I’ve learned about all of these exciting Web 2.0 tools, I’m chomping at the bit, eager to start using them with my students. In talking to a couple of other teachers at my school, I learned that I can get Smart Notebook uploaded onto my classroom computer and perform many of the same functions of a Smart Board with it. I will be able to learn what can be done with a Smart Board by using the software and a projector, so that I’ll be prepared when it’s my turn to get a Smart Board. In the mean time, in addition to a computer class once each cycle, I have been using a projector in my classroom to integrate Web 2.0 technologies in my teaching.

Digital Textbooks

Digital textbooks are something I would like to explore further. I was impressed with the online material provided for the Nelson Math textbooks I have in my classroom. It provides online exercise sheets and links to related web sites that I have posted on my classroom blog. I will definitely explore other online textbooks and look at how educators are creating their own.

Professional Development

I will continue to pursue opportunities for professional development offered by my school division and through the local universities. When I was looking for a course on Web 2.0, I was surprised that I could only find one offered by one of the two local universities and it was available to Aboriginal students only. If the Department of Education wants teachers to begin reporting on students’ ICT skills beginning this year, they need to provide more training in this area to both education students and practicing teachers. Hopefully we will soon start seeing more courses offered at the local universities. Many teachers feel that the Internet is a dangerous place for students; they need to be made aware of all of the free tools available on the Internet that can enhance their instruction and make it more engaging for their students.

Tools to Share with my Colleagues

Teachers need to assess the educational value of any Web 2.0 tool before they use it with their students. (Davies and Merchant,2009) suggest that this assessment include four components: Purpose, Participation, Partnerships, and Planning and I think they are all self-explanatory. Following are some Web 2.0 technologies that I think provide excellent learning opportunities for our students and with some pre-planning can enhance learning for our students. Some of these tools are ones that teachers can begin using themselves for professional development, collaborating with colleagues and planning units of study. I think it's helpful for teachers to see the personal value of these tools before they can get excited about teaching them to their students.

Education Blogs

Classroom blogging is a Web 2.0 tool that all teachers should embrace as a means of teaching online literacy skills to students and for communicating with parents and administrators the work that is going on in their classrooms. I’ve shared my classroom blog with some of my colleagues and all of my students’ parents. I haven’t invited comments on the blog, so haven’t received any feedback on it there. Some parents have expressed an appreciation of the recordings of French Dictee words, so that’s something worth continuing. I saw more value in it this week when a parent asked for some homework for her son who had been away sick for most of the week. Besides the work I sent home, I referred her to our classroom blog for her son to do an activity I had set up there; it involved making a Wordle with French vocabulary posted to the blog.

Nings

Nings are an excellent way for teachers to network and learn from each other ways of integrating technology into the classroom. These social networking sites are connecting educators both near and far and making the act of teaching a much less isolated experience. By entering into dialogue with each other, we receive different perspectives on teaching and innovative ways of teaching more effectively with Web 2.0 technologies. Nings such as Moodle are a safe way of allowing students to participate in a forum that is engaging and develops their literacy skills.

In Grade 3 Social Studies, we learn about communities around the world. I’d like to connect my classroom with one in another part of the world to learn about what life is like in their community. A Ning such as ePals might be a tool to use for this purpose. It brings teachers and students together world-wide to learn in a collaborative way through blogging and email. I was aware of this site several years ago, but never got this project off the ground, mainly because I was apprehensive about my students communicating with other students and how safe it would be. Now that I am well-versed in the use of Nings and Internet safety, I feel more confident about using them with my students in this context.

RSS Feeds and Aggregators

Google Reader is a fabulous time-saver for educators who want to keep up-to-date on edblogs, news, and personal interest sites. Finding and subscribing to sites is very easy and provides readers with information in a multi-media format (video, audio, and text). By including it on a home page such as iGoogle, it is easily accessible.

Wikis

My math games wiki didn’t really take off as I had hoped, but I think it’s one that provides a great way for teachers and students to work collaboratively on projects such as I did with my math games wiki, an ongoing compilation of math game resources. The problem is that most teachers aren’t familiar with wikis (or many other Web 2.0 tools) and don’t know how to use them. Professional development needs to be provided because the “intense face-to-face business of classroom life” makes it hard for teachers to find the time to explore Web 2.0 tools” (Davies and Merchant, 2009).

Social Bookmarking

All teachers should know about and use social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Diigo. They’re a fabulous way to keep track of good websites and share them with colleagues. They can also be used by students who are collaborating on projects as a way of compiling resources to share.

Conclusion

We, as educators, have the responsibility to be innovative in responding to the potential of these powerful new Web 2.0 technologies. Children need to be taught about the kinds of online communication that are helpful to relationships and to learning (Davies and Merchant, 2009). Teachers need to be taught about these Web 2.0 tools and the valuable learning opportunities they can provide for their students. When teachers can effectively use these tools, they will be able to effectively teach them to their students. Like it or not, Web 2.0 is a big part of our students' lives and the sooner teachers embrace that fact, the better off they and their students will be. I

References

Davies, J., and Merchant, G. (2009) Web 2.0 for Schools – Learning and Social Participation. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing Inc.

Richardson, W. (2009) Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful webtools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Donna's Google Reader Subscriptions

Blogs, Blogging for Professional Development, and RSS Feeds

LEARNING ABOUT THE TOOLS

BLOGS AND BLOGGING

The term "blog" refers to a web log, which Wikipedia defines as "a website typically composed by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are in reverse-chronological order". A blog is like an online diary or journal.

There are blogs on every conceivable subject and there are many different blogging styles. Here are some as outlined in Darren Rowse's article in Problogger.

• Instructional - how to do something
• Informational - gives information on a topic, e.g. Wikipedia
• Reviews - consumer reports on customer satisfaction with various products
• Lists - Top 10 Ways to, 7 Reasons Why
• Interviews - a guest post is featured to get an expert opion on a topic
• Case Studies
• Inspirational

Setting up a blog is easy. I chose Blogger.com to begin my blog for this course because I had never blogged before and I found it easy to use. My blog has evolved over the past several months as I have learned more about Web 2.0 technology.

Finding good blogs to follow is easy using search engines like Blogsearch.google.com or through an aggregator like Google Reader. Once you find a good blog to follow, either click on the RSS link on the blog (if it has one) or copy the URL address into your aggregator.

RSS AGGREGATORS

This brings up the question: What are RSS feeds and aggregators? Wikipedia defines RSS as "Really Simple Sindication". What's simple about it is that "the content comes to you instead of you going to get it (Richardson, 2009). It is a group of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works, such as blog entries and news headlines. Blogs have an XML code or "feed" that allow readers to subscribe to the content created on the blogs. RSS feeds allow you to go to one site to access the content of a multitude of sites using a type of software called an "aggregator" or feed collector. The aggregator checks the feeds you subscribe to approximately once per hour, and collects all the new content of sites you subscribe to. Google Reader, Bloglines and Newsgator are examples of popular RSS aggregators.

I have found Google Reader relatively easy to use. I have organized my subscriptions to various feeds in folders, so I can efficiently find and read articles of interest. I mark articles with a star so I can quickly refer to them at a later time.

The value of RSS is that it allows you to read more content from more sources in less time (Richardson, 2009). Richardson talks about newspapers and magazines becoming obsolete as readers can pick and choose what they want to read from a variety of sources and in a sense create their own magazine or newspaper, or the "Daily Me", as he calls it. Information can come from blogs, newspapers, websites and search engines fed into Google Reader.

Search engines like news.google.com enable you to keep up-to-date on the latest news developments on specific topics. For example, I did an Advanced Search on "Winnipeg" and "Health" and found the latest news stories about health-related topics in Winnipeg. (Not surprisingly, there was lots on H1N1 clinics.) By copying the URL address from the results page into my subscriptions in Google Reader, I am now kept up-to-date with the latest developments on this topic. I also learned more than I needed to know about Tiger Woods' recent car accident.

Technorati is another way to search for blogs to subscribe to. Richardson sites Technorati as a “leader in indexing Weblog content”. I signed up, but wasn’t able to create the “watchlists” he mentions, as the site no longer provides this feature. The tag page is very helpful for finding blogs with content on a particular topic. By mousing over a the tag, a reader can see how many times a blog post in Technorati was tagged with it during the past month.

PERSONAL LEARNING

The experience I have had in this course with blogging will serve me well in the future as I contemplate what my first personal blog will be about. I may begin a travel blog or diary of my adventures and activities while on leave to share with family and friends. I will continue to use Google Reader as my "Daily Me" to read articles of personal interest and seek to engage in conversation with like-minded people.

Besides the two blog search engines mentioned previously, Bloggerschoiceawards.com is another one to use for finding blogs of personal interest. I used it to search for blogs on a variety of topics, including Travel, Health, Book Reviews and Cooking. Here are a few that I've subscribed to:

Canada’s Adventure Couple - This one appeals to me because I like the layout and it provides lots of good travel ideas and tips.

Feminine Fit Blog provides daily fitness, nutrition and weight loss tips for women. I have found many good articles to read here.

The New York Review of Books is one of thousands of blogs on book reviews. With my upcoming leave of absence not to far off, I'd like to find suggestions for some good books to read.

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

BLOGGING AND RSS FEEDS FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Blogs are yet another way to connect educators both near and far. (Richardson, 2009) suggests that school committees use them to archive minutes of meetings, continue conversations between meetings, share links to relevant information, and store documents. Teachers can use them to share best practises, lesson plans, and projects being done in class with other teachers. An aggregator such as Google Reader is an efficient way for educators to keep up with what others are doing in their classrooms and the latest trends in education and technology. Finding good educational blogs or edblogs can be done with with blog search engines or by referring to the Blogrolls of reputable educators who are using Web 2.0 technology. Here are a few edblogs I've found useful:

The Innovative Educator

This blog belongs to Lisa Nielsen, P.D. Manager of Instructional Technology with the N.Y.C. Department of Education. I like her blog because she offers practical ideas that can be put to use right away in the classroom. For example, in a recent post she writes about Watchknow.com, a video aggregator site where educators can find videos suitable for student viewing from a variety of different sources. This is a valuable site for me because I can't get YouTube at school In another post she writes about how teachers can get students using Web 2.0 tools to publish their work instead of handing in a paper copy. In her Blogroll I found another great blog called Free Technology for Teachers which is now listed in my Blogroll.

Cool Cat Teacher Blog

This blog is written by Vicki Davis, a teacher from Georgia. Her blog provides a wealth of information about Web 2.0. Her Education Blogroll is a great resource for finding other edublogs to follow. In her "Most Valuable Posts" section, there are a number of good reads. I found an interesting article she wrote on using technology to help students with learning disabilities. Her son, who has a reading and writing disability, began to use a laptop at school to type his class notes and was able to be more successful. She talks about auditory learners benefiting from tools such as Audacity and Wikis as a good tool for the visual learner. Better yet, she suggests pairing students together who have different learning styles so they complement each other.

Weblogg-ed

Will Richardson's site is one I've turned to many times during the last few months. Just about anything I want to know about Web 2.0 can be found here. By clicking the RSS Feeds button at the top of his home page, I was linked to an instruction manual for teachers on using RSS Feeds.

CLASSROOM BLOGGING AND RSS FEEDS

There are many sites available for classroom blogging. Lorrie Jackson lists and reviews several of them in her article on blogging with elementary school students. She writes about how blogging works, what students and teachers blog about, software and tools to consider and cautions about Internet safety.

I am using Blogger for my classroom blog because I am most familiar with it. Currently I am using the blog primarily to provide links to websites I want my students to use during our computer lab time. I have sent the blog address home with my students in hopes that they will access it and get additional practise in reading and math skills at home. It appears that a small number of them are in fact using it at home. I also see this blog as a way of letting parents know what we're doing at school and what they can do at home to reinforce what their children are learning at school. One parent mentioned to me at his child's learning conference that he appreciated the podcast of the dictee words because he doesn't speak French. My classroom blog is also a good way of sharing what's going on in the classroom.with our school's administrators.

My next step in classroom blogging is to get my students involved in writing. I recognize that blogs can be an effective way to help students become better writers. “Research has long shown that students write more and with greater detail with an authentic audience” (Warlick article) I have been exploring Class Blogmeister as a blogging forum for my students because it is free, easy to use and password protected. I spent some time on the site exploring classroom blogs and found Mrs. Deere's Classroom Blog, a Grade 4 class in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The teacher has had the children create avatars and write short biographies of themselves. She has given them questions to answer about what they like most about Grade 4, what's been most difficult and what they want to learn this year. She reminds them that their blog posts can be viewed by the public, so they are not to include any personal information. To reassure parents, in her introduction she tells them that everything their children write will be previewed by her before posting to the site.

Another example of a classroom blog is a novel study of Sarah Plain and Tall. The teacher has created a blog about the book asking students to comment on questions that she has posted. This would be a quick, easy, and relatively safe way to introduce kids to blogging.

Including RSS feeds in our classroom blog would be a great way to introduce aggregators like Google Reader to my students. Teaching them how to skim and scan for relevant content in an aggregator will prepare them to be "the knowledge workers of the future" (Richardson, 2009) them to choose subscriptions to topics of blogs that interest them would give them a sense of ownership of the classroom blog. They would also be more engaged in the reading and we could respond to some of the posts we read together. I spent some time searching for childrens' blogs in Google's blogsearch engine and had to sift through a lot of material to find something I could use in the classroom. Then I did a search on children's magazines to see if there were any with RSS feeds. Here are a couple by National Geographic. I like that there is very little advertising on them. .

http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.com/kidsnews/

http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.com/dogeared/

As I've mentioned in previous posts, staying safe online is always an issue when using Classroom 2.0 tools, and classroom blogs are no different. Before undertaking student blogging, parents and students need to be informed about these issues. Cybersmart is a great site from Australia for educating students and their parents about Internet safety. Manitoba also has also developed a site called Cybertip.ca.

While I am on leave, I will have more time for reflection on how to set up my classroom blog for next year. I will have the time to explore more classroom blogs and develop one for my students to use more as a Web 2.0 tool, reading as well as writing.

CONCLUSION

Blogs are a relatively good substitute for face-to-face communication and offer a way to overcome the isolation of the classroom. The caution is that blogging can be a very “directed at” or “sit and get” (Web 1.0) style of learning if responses are not made or responded to in a timely manner. It is the interaction between reader and writer that develops community on the Web and provides the opportunity to broaden our knowledge and understanding. By learning how to blog as educators, we are able to teach our students how to participate in ongoing dialogue to extend their knowledge and develop their reading and writing skills. Blogging provides a larger audience for them and motivates them to participate in the read/write Web. It enlarges the learning community beyond the classroom walls for ourselves and our students and develops an awareness of the global community at large.

REFERENCE

Richardson, W. (2009) Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful webtools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Why Let Our Students Blog Video