Having fun exploring!

I must admit that when I first opened the link to all of the Web 2.0 tools I was a little scared. I could not believe that there were that many different tools out there. How did I fall so far behind? Then I started clicking on them and checking them out and I had a lot of fun. Two of my favorites were StoryJumper and Fotobabble. I created a story for this week’s assignment using StoryJumper and it was relatively simple to use. I can definitely see the benefits for use in the classroom. Kids could create their own nonfiction books to demonstrate their understanding of a topic. I do not have a microphone for my laptop so I could not try Fotobabble, but I am going to go shopping this week to get one. I think that students could create some wonderful projects with either of these tools. Both sites at first glance seem very user friendly (I have not tried to set up my classes in StoryJumper yet). I plan on spending more time on this site in the future, but now I am off to explore Kindle.

To Game Or Not To Game

This week’s assignment was very rewarding for me. I have never been a gamer and this week reinforced that for me. I tried to get onto Second Life a couple times to no avail. I took this as a message that I am not supposed to be a gamer. I did however research the topic quite thoroughly and found that I do see how social networks and gaming could be used in the classroom. Previous to this week I would have disagreed with using either of them in an educational setting. Here is the link to the articles about World of Warcraft that helped change my mind.

Another reason that I changed my opinion about gaming and social networks in the classroom was my interview with my son and a few of his friends. In talking with them I saw how passionate they were about gaming. If you could somehow get them to have the same passion about learning that would be great. Maybe incorporating gaming and social networking into their education is a way to do that. When I showed them the game on 360Ed they were really excited and said that they would love to take a history class like that. Not only was it very informative to interview my son, it was also nice to sit and talk to him for two hours about something that he was very enthusiastic about. He wanted to talk to me which is a rarity these days. Teenagers are not very much fun!

Finding Podcasts and Videos

I do not know if it was my topic, animal adaptations, or that I am not very good at finding podcasts, but I found it very difficult to find any. There seemed to be many more videos out there than podcasts. I am going to keep searching just to see if the more I practice the better I get! Jing is going to be my next endeavor! I have only tried to use it once before and I was not very successful. Hopefully I will be able to figure it out now.

Creating my Flickr Account

Creating my Flickr account would have been much easier if my photos were stored on my computer. Using Flickr was easy, and I found it very user friendly. Unfortunately my husband is the photo person and keeps all of the photos on his Mac. Being a PC user I had no idea how to even find the photos. Once I found them and figured out how to use a Mac the process was very fun and simple. I only uploaded a few pictures from my wedding and honeymoon for now, but I do plan on uploading the rest of our photos because then I will have access to them also. My sister-in-law will be happy because she is still waiting for pictures from Christmas! You can check out my photos at if you would like to see my wonderful husband and my sometimes wonderful teenage sons.