Web+2.0

Montoya 1 Jake Montoya Dr. Chung EDT. 3010 June 23, 2010 Web 2.0 Assignment While exploring the offered features of Web 2.0 I found that I enjoyed prezi.com, secondlife.com, pbworks.com, mypodcast.com and cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com. The first site that I explored was prezi.com. This is one of the coolest and easily accessible websites that I have ever seen. I was amazed at the ease with which I was able to create a unique and free-flowing presentation. I enjoyed the experience of working with prezi.com much more than construction a standard power point present. I enjoyed the ability to rotate the text and graphics, group together similar ideas and create a pathway of where I want the audiences’ attention to be drawn.

I think prezi.com would work in my classroom because the students would be able to manipulate this site with a fair amount of ease. The population of students that I work with are, for the most part from lower income backgrounds and many of them do not own a computer. However, that will not matter when they either head to college, or to the work force. At some point in their lives they will have to do some sort of public speak, or give a public presentation. Perzi.com, I believe, will take away some of the natural fear of public speaking because they will know that, if nothing else, at least the presentation will look good and be in logical order.

The next site I explored was secondlife.com; this site was breath-taking. The first thing I thought of was the movie “Total Recall” with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The film is set in the future and a company sells people virtual fantasy experiences. I was glad that a site like secondlife.com was being utilized by higher education facilities like the University of Notre Dame. Secondlife.com seems like a site that one can lose themselves in, and possibly get into some trouble.

I thing secondlife.com could be a valuable addition to a classroom because it allows the user to access the entire world in a much different, and interactive, way than has ever existed before. I thing the use of the avatars and the ability fly are creative and attention grabbing aspects. However, I would have to take a deeper look and find out if the classroom environment could somehow be segregated from the rest of secondlife.com. I would hate to catch my students selling virtual drugs and engaging in avatar gang wars on the various “islands” of their peer, or worse yet strangers. That might give people a worse view of my students.

The third site I visited was pbworks.com. I liked this site because it does not have the distractions of a site like a secondlife.com. Bringing the classroom into the 21st century is one of the main goals of the principle of the school I work at. Mr. Chavez, the principle, understands that if the students of our school are going to be successful in a wired world they will have to learn to utilize the internet for something more than checking their myspace.com accounts.

Another aspect of pbworks.com that I liked was the ability for the teacher to post lecture notes, homework assignment, or engage in dialogue with the students. The best part of this feature is that the parents have access to everything that is going on in the classroom. Parental Montoya 2 involvement is a key component to student success. I think most parents would like to see exactly what their children are doing on a day to day basis.

The fourth site I visited was mypodcast.com. I chose to write about this site because I have never done anything that vaguely related to podcasting. This is something that I am intimidated by, so I want to master podcasting. The first thing I noticed on the mypodcast.com was a link to “English for Spanish speakers”. Amazing, you can download foreign language classes onto you ipod, or MP3 player.

I really like the idea of podcasting in the classroom. It seems like we are waging a losing war in the classroom; we cannot get the kids to stop texting and listening to their personal audio devices. I should really take the advice that I give the kids. “Would you rather win the battle, or would you rather win the war.” Basically, this saying that some fights are not worth fighting, and may even be detrimental in the end. Why fight the students about phones and ipods when we can use them a vehicle to get them educational material.

The last site I explored was cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com. That is a whole lot of cool tools for the schools. This site can answer just about any question that a teacher may have about how to make the classroom more interactive and fun. Going to this website was like opening a treasure chest of classroom resources.

I thing students would utilize cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com because it can lead them anywhere on the internet they may need to go to find project resources, or just find something fun to do. I really like the drawing resources that the site suggested. Many of my students are graffiti artists and I think it would be a good thing for them to discover a release their creative energies without vandalizing property. This was an extremely interesting assignment. I have never even heard of Web 2.0 before. I am looking forward to checking out the secondlife.com site on my own time. I am very curious about that particular site. I am also thinking about utilizing prezi.com for my final project in the other class I am taking this semester.