Web 2.0 services are generating what is truly a personal learning renaissance.Here's a comment from teacher Elizabeth Davis at Classroom 2.0:"Following and reading blogs, participating in ning, contributing to wikis, writing in my blog, I haven't thought this much in years. It truly is an amazing phenomenon. I feel so intellectually alive. I'm inspired and challenged constantly. The blogs I read lead me to question and explore new tools and Websites. I haven't written this much since I was in school. It is all so exciting and energizing. For me, classroom 2.0 could just be about my own growth and learning and that would be enough."A good example of a free Web 2.0 service is Wikispaces. Here's a class wiki made with the service - A Broken World, the World War I wiki of a Grade 9 class. Their teacher comments:You are now "textbook writers." Your goal is to make a better, more interesting textbook than that overweight, boring, 20th Century history textbook you're now using. And to do work of such high quality that you can include it on your resume as another example of your academic skills in your "digital portfolio."Here are some other School 2.0 online services:* Diigo- for "social bookmarking" of Web sources.* Blogger - to create a class weblog.* Ning - to build your own social network]
Early EFL: Leahn is located in Spain, where she works as a freelance language assistant teacher and as a teacher trainer in workshops for primary and secondary school teachers.
Box of Chocolates: Join this EFL teacher from Recife, Brazil, who is very passionate about teaching
Neslihan Durmusoglu: This blog reflects on the world of EFL and about being a 21st-century learner and teacher.
Reflections of a Teacher and Learner: David teaches kids at a private college in Turkey and he also is a distance student on the University of Manchester’s MA in EdTech & TESOL programme
An A-Z of ELT: This blog is managed by the man who wrote An A-Z of ELT in 2006, Scott Thornbury.
Authentic Teaching: This blogger has taught EFL in Brazil, and taught ELT for several years as well. He now is earning an MA in Education in London
Jeremy Harmer’s Blog: Jeremy is a writer and teacher/teacher-trainer for English to speakers of other languages, and he blogs about presentation.
Marisa Constantinides — TEFL Matters: This blogger runs CELT Athens, a teacher development center based in Greece.
Shaun Wilden’s Blog: Shaun has been involved in English language teaching for almost twenty years. He also maintains several online teaching sites including ihonlinetraining.net.
So this is English… This blog is filled with ideas, thoughts, discoveries, feedback and more about the teaching and learning of English.
Teaching Village: Barbara is an English teacher currently living in Kitakyushu, Japan, and using Web 2.0 tools and virtual worlds.
Technology and teaching - two words that seem to fit together perfectly today for most teachers and learners. So much so that a slew of new blogs have come on board to talk about education technology - or, edTech. This list of the 50 best education technology blogs are not inclusive, as there are so many new blogs available; however, if you look at links provided by many of these blogs to other edTech blogs, you may learn about even more blog that you aren't reading yet.
" * About Russell Stannard
* ELT/ESL Videos
* Web 2.0/ICT Videos
* Russell's Research
Videos
* 9 Great Spelling Sites for ELT
* Free on-line screen capture tool
* Zimmer Twins-Brilliant Cartoon/Dialogue Tool for Kids
* Word Magnets-Great vocabulary/Grammar Tool
* How to use Survey Monkey
* My favourite Website on the Web
* 5 Simple but brilliant ELT tools
* Great Text Tool called WordSift
* Wolfram Alpha Great Question Making Tool
* Fun Viral Marketing Tools
* Amazing 3D dialogue builder
* 2 amazing presentation tools
* Best Pronunciation Sites
* Best ELT sites 2008
* Great dictation site
* Wordle-Great Vocab Site
* My favourite Listening Site
* 10 vocab sites for kids
* ELT Videos with subtitles
* Brilliant Comic Site
* 7 Great Fun sites for ELT
* Unusual Vocabulary Site
* Really Fun Dialogue Building Tool
* A site for drawing&Recording
* 11 great sites for teaching English
* Recording & Searching Podcasts with Podamatic
* Good sites for ELT Video content
* Review of the best ELT podcasts
* Voicethread- Presentation tool
* Fun drawing tool
Humanising Language Teaching
The Blogs I use most for ELT
* Larry Ferlazzo's blog
* Nik Peachey's blog
* Blog at IH Barcelona
* Ozge's Blog
* Carl's Blog
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"I think you will enjoy discovering all of the new tools that these web sources will present. I guarantee that you will find something new that will amaze you as you explore. So get ready to dive into these web 2.0 treasure troves!" Jim Forde
On the 19 April, in London CETIS are holding a meeting in London on Repositories and the Open Web. The theme of the meeting is how repositories and social sharing / web 2.0 web sites compare as hosts for learning materials: how well does each facilitate the tasks of resource discovery and resource management; what approaches to resource description do the different approaches take; and are there any lessons that users of one approach can draw from the other?
Abstract: Modern academic libraries cater the information needs of a more demanding and tech-savvy new generation user group that prefers to reside in an open, self-generated online environment largely supported by
Web 2.0 technologies. To reach the users where they are, the libraries should revamp their service strategies by incorporating tools like blogs and online social networks. Blog is a handy technology for library professionals which can be reshaped as an information and publicity tool, as a feedback instrument, as an interactive and collaborative learning medium and as a
facility for library promotion. Online social networks connect like minded people who share information, ideas and feelings. The unparalleled growth of user bases of these networks presents an opportunity before academic
libraries that may be harnessed by making the library an active member of these communities. The experience of an academic library in India shows that reaching the user at their own time and space is more easy and
productive when we adapt new web technologies.
Laura Hilliger blog zythepsary.com here discusses the mozilla Teach the web" MOOC to start may 2.
content to include:
Introduction to Webmaker is all about community, openness and collaboration.
Remix and Contextualize is all about putting web literacy skills into other types of learning plans.
Do and Share is about experimenting with collaborative, participatory learning spaces and using the online community to improve your practice.
Within each topic are 3 subtopics - Those are the themes we'll be focusing on weekly. 9 themes, 9 week MOOC - nice how that worked out, don't cha think? For each theme, we'll be MAKING things to explore ideas because, you know, you learn lots when you make. We'll have a chance to look at each other's makes, give feedback, and hack on ideas throughout the 9 weeks.
There will be several ways to follow along. Here's what we're thinking for communication channels:
Sign up to the webmaker.org/teach list to participate
Keep your eye on hivenyc.org/teachtheweb
Submit your blog for aggregation
Join G+ Webmaker Community
Use #teachtheweb on Twitter
Bookmark the Big Blue Button link for May 2nd, 23rd, and June 13th, 4pm UTC
Check the calendar for Twitter chats and Big Blue Button sessions
The purpose of tagging is to help make it easier for the content to be easily found.
Blogs, wikis, podcasting, video sharing websites (e.g. YouTube and Vimeo), photosharing websites (e.g. Flickr and Picasa), social networking sites (e.g. FaceBook, Twitter) are all examples of Web 2.0 technologies.
Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) are all about using web tools such as blogs, wiki, twitter, facebook to create connection with others which extend our learning, increases our reflection while enabling us to learn together as part of a global community.
Lengthy, substantive piece on blogging for educators, starting from "what is a blog," continuing through Web2.0 tools, and ending with Personal Learning Networks. Something for everyone here.
Blogging the Learning Process
Just as blogs can help foster conversation among students and faculty, instructors are discovering that they can also serve a more personal role, as a tool of reflection and self-appraisal. “The blog’s biggest strength is in the development and authentication of the student voice in learning,” notes Ruth Reynard, associate professor of education and the director of the Center for Instructional Technology at Trevecca Nazarene University (TN).
Reynard uses blogs as a way to get students to reflect on their coursework–essentially by keeping an online journal in which they track their learning. As opposed to a traditional journal that is read only by the instructor, student
When used as a tool for reflection, blogs allow students to write at length about their own experiences as learners, and to read and comment on the insights posted on their classmates’ blogs. This type of public, shared self-reflection is difficult to achieve in other forms of collaborative online writing, such as discussion boards. “If the
Reynard has also found that blogs are a great tool for helping her graduate students learn to write academically. She requires her graduate students to embed hyperlinks to online sources that are influencing their thinking in their reflective blog posts.
We are all talking about 21st Century and Web 2.0 tools in the classroom, but I've become a fan of the blog, and I'm new to using them with younger kids. I am inteterested in finding who my fellow bloggers are and how you are using them with your students.
During the last
six or so years I have created a number of 'how-to' documents and presentations
for a variety of web based and related technologies. They are available from the
various workshop web pages however I thought it might prove helpful to link to
all the documents from a single page. Some of my workshop participants have referred to
these documents as 'cheat sheets'.
~ www.larkin.net.au
~
| Welcome | About Me | Technology | History | Galleries |
Music | Blog
|
Presentation and workshop documents
During the last
six or so
years I have created a number of 'how-to' documents and presentations
for a
variety of web based and related technologies. They are available from
the
various workshop web pages however I
thought it might prove helpful to link to
all the
documents
from a single page. Some of my workshop participants have referred to
these
documents as 'cheat sheets'.
Web
2.0Read~Write Web Overview Information
sharing
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
"Joyce Valenza Ph.D
On the librarian: What's the point . . ? The Twitter conversation
April 30, 2009
@karlfisch: What's the point of having a media specialist if they aren't specialists in the media forms of the day?
I was nearly finished copying and pasting, figuring out how best to post Tuesday's Twitter conversation, when I discovered that Karl Fisch (@karlfisch), who kinda started it all, already took care of that. (You likely know of Karl's very popular and provocative videos.)
I am still not sure how best to frame this conversation on the place of the information/media specialist in today's school.
What is clear is that a lot of smart people--people who are out there teaching, speaking, moving, and shaking--are disappointed in what they see when they see school librarians. Either we have a perception problem or we need to do some serious retooling. I'd say we have to deal with both. In a hurry.
Being an information (or media) specialist today means being an expert in how information and media flow TODAY! It is about knowing how information and media are created and communicated. How to evalute, synthesize, and ethically use information and media in all their varied forms. It is about being able to communicate knowlege in new ways for new audiences using powerful new information and communication tools.
Forgive me if it hurts.
In my mind, if you are not an expert in new information and communication tools, you are NOT a media specialist for today.
Tuesday's conversation happened in the open, on Twitter. We need to be aware that these conversations are happening where we cannot hear them--at conferences, at Board and cabinet meetings. We also need to make sure that our voices are heard and that we hear the voices of others in places like Twitter, where so many educational leaders and thinkers are chatting about us and many other things.
I've selected the remarks that resonated loudest for me. (I've shuffled a bit, but you can visit Karl'
Blogging is one of the eventual realization of web 2.0 technologies. It is the driving engine behind this online information revolution. Thousands of blogs are created everyday and for different purposes. Some people blog to make money, some to share their voice with the world, some to immortalize their life events and diaries, and others blog just to vex and scam people.
