Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Del.icio.us


As a future teacher, I would use Del.icio.us in the classroom to teach my students organizational skills and collaboration tools. It's a great way to involve the students in their own learning, and to give them a role and responsibility in the classroom. Also, the students can collect several resources and share them with each other. This is giving them accountability in what they are learning.

I think I will use this to help students learn how to research, and to challenge them to think outside of the box and become familiar with technology and its benefits.

http://delicious.com/abbymaak

Zotero

This is an example of Zotero on a World War II site. It is a great resource and tool to cite websites and find quotations quickly. I really think it could be a helpful thing to teach and use in the classroom. Using Zotero seems more efficient than any other way to find information on the internet.

Jing Video about Prezi


Here is a link to my Jing Video about Prezi:
http://tinyurl.com/dxdkto


Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Application to Twitter



Twitter is a very effective tool that can be used by students for collaboration, communication, or just as a social network. But it also has many educational purposes. One certain application I came across was called "Tweet poll". This application allows users with a Twitter account to create a multiple choice poll about any given topic. This gives students so many opportunities to research information or conduct interviews! You can write the question and give as many answers as needed. You can also identify if the person is able to answer more than once. For an example, I conducted a poll titled "Where do you currently reside?" Students were to answer whether they lived on-campus, off-campus, with their parents, or if they had a nomad lifestyle. Eleven people voted, and now I have a sample of the ratio of people living on-campus to off-campus. It also incorporates visual learners by having a pie graph of the findings.

If a teacher used tweet poll in the classroom, the students can discuss the reliability and validity of the outcomes. Students could choose a random sample of people to poll, or focus on a certain people group. Then, the students could compare and contrast the different information they collected between the different groups. Also, if the students wanted to be more involved with users on Twitter, they could specifically ask different people a question about what it was like when they were little. If they asked a generation of people older than them, they could compare how something changed with time.

I think tweet poll is a great toll for students to begin with and explore as they research and discover different facts and information. It is a great tool to poll users, and it's simple and efficient. Students could master this content just by using something interactive like a tweet poll.