Gannon+Assignments

media type="custom" key="6864371" This widget could be used for many classroom activities. For starters, a teacher could create their own website and post/record messages to their students rather than typing them out. Also students use Voki to record their own voices, create their own website and embed the Voki into their website as an introduction or for anything that needs an explanation.

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__**Article Summary**__

Edutopia is a great site to pull ideas from people trying things in education. The one group that I belong to is Project Based Learning. The tool itself offers great explanations of resources as well as provides a spot for those on the front lines to explain what's working for them and what's not. The part of the article that I enjoyed was classroom2.0. I've never heard of this site and created an account. It looks similar to Edutopia where teachers can discuss, collaborate and share their success and failures in education. The part I love the most about Classroom2.0 is that it is tech based. Being a technology integration coach, this blog type site will help me find extra resources that me or my teachers may use.

The one part about the article that I do not see eye to eye with is the part about integrating social networking. The article advocates social networking sites as educational tools and I still cannot, in my most liberal thinking, find a tool like facebook or twitter to be educational. I understand that you can follow people that post important topics and discussions, however there are way too many resources available from those sites that are a distraction. In addition to this, there are so many positive, educational resources that can be utilized for blogging, discussions, etc. Social networking sites are not fit for education in my opinion.

I also applaud the authors ideas for first timers taking baby steps to implementing a tech tool into their pedagogy. There are tons of tools. The author advises those to find a tool that can be useful to their needs and master it. There is no need for a teacher to overwhelm themselves by trying to master or use too many tools at one time. Baby steps, it's the way to start when utilizing technology in a lesson.


 * __Reflection__**

Wordle is a pretty creative tool. I have used this in the past for students to create attractive headings to their wikispaces and other websites. I have also used this tool in and educational setting by simply brainstorming in English. For example, a teacher will say a vocabulary word and have their students write down on a small piece of paper a single word that comes to mind when they say the term. The teacher then has a student from the class record all of the responses in a Wordle to see which is the most common.

This tool could also be used as a brainstorming idea for a Journalism class. I have used this in a Journalism class for story ideas. We brainstormed story ideas and plugged them into a Wordle.

Capzles

BeFunky

ToonDoo

Animoto

Google Maps

Webspiration

SlideShare

Scribd

Voicethread

Google Spreadsheet

Glogster

Fluid Surveys

Prezi

Jog the Web