Web 2.0: Enhancing Education Through Technology

Teachers and students using social networks for curricular work.

I use Edmodo as a social media "tool" to use as an extension of my classroom and the students love it.

this presents an opinion on Instructors commenting on students discussions. Many observations. The author statesher best advice is "" to be a presence in each discussion room and... what was most important was not the quantity of the interactions with students but the quality of those interactions." The author found if she did not comment students were disappointed and lost interest in the discussion so the teacher is the cheerleader to highlight important things and clarifiy any confusions.

A lofty empirical research article intended for doctoral candidates and other researchers but if you can get past the SAT style language the information contained is rather interesting. While my high school students will not be writing formal literary analyses I am interested in them producing high quality papers based on valid research questions/topics and having them think of new ways to view the same literature. Some of the texts we read in class have so many articles and summaries already prepared that it is sometimes hard for students to think of new ways to approach the material and this article offers some interesting thought processes to consider when preparing a literary analysis.

A great resource for sites to use when writing literary criticism. Memorial Hall Library is located in Andover, MA and this particular article divides the information into the following categories: Plot Summaries, Criticism, Authors, Contemporary Authors, Reader's Advisory, Literary Awards List, and What do I Read Next? Easy to use and some new sites I did not know about.

This is a Prezi presentation created by a science teacher all about how she uses her blogs (and wow it looks impressive!) in her classes and other forms of technology to improve the student learning.

I think I'll be sharing this with my science department. Nice find, Katy!

This article discusses the disagreement between administrators and teachers regarding online safety taught at school.

Survey conducted by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and Microsoft revealed that students are not savvy in the area of being safe and ethical in cyberspace. Schools, teachers and administrators need to bridge the divide for students to not only be safe, but skillful digital information users.

Seeing as we "talked" a lot about blogging policy and digital ethics this week, I thought this was a perfect information literacy article.

This is actually a video including ideas from film director George Lucas. The main point of the video is that teaching "communication" in the future should involve much more than just teaching writing but should involve all the ways that students can express their ideas.

This article struggles with the difficulty of determining whether or not a student has cheated in an online class. It doesn't, however, provide many real-life solutions other than requiring short response answers.

This article focusses primarily on exam taking methods when students take online course. The writer gives a variety of suggestions on how to promote academic honesty when her students take tests. It did give some good suggestions on how to do this but essentially during test taking situations we have to trust our students.

Students from small schools with budget cuts are taking AP courses online. Students are being educated as well as being immersed in the technology world.

This article discusses WikiTrust, a tool that students can use to evaluate the trustworthiness of information posted online. As educators, we need to teach kids how to use the Internet wisely and how to gain valid information.

This article provides us with a clear example of the use of a 2.0 Web tool in class to improve students' comprehension of the topics taught. Likewise, it increased students'' concentration and encouraged the use of technology within the content.

Before giving students internet access, there must be safety training for teachers and students.

This article is about the Big6 and how to use it with Web2. They talk about how to use the Big6 with email, online discussions, real-time communications, desktop teleconferencing and collaborative writing. It fits into the Research and Information Fluency Remixed. I liked the format on another site http://www.librarymediaconnection.com/pdf/lmc/reviews_and_articles/featured_articles/Eisenberg_May_June2010.pdf but found I had to put the address into Google in order to access it. The URL did not work.

This article explores the idea that it is more important to teach the thinking behind technology than it is to simply use expensive technology in the classroom. The article supports the idea that technology can be used to get kids communicating in creative ways, and it can help to get them actively engaged in lessons.

Every teacher should read this

An article as the title implies that is in favor of using projects int he classroom to enhance learning

10 Ways Digital Slowpokes Can Catch Up! By Ann Handley Even though this article was written for owners of small businesses, I think it is worth reading to stay up on what is happening out there in the "real world" of marketing and persuading people to choose their business *(using all those wonderful persuasive writing skills learned in school!) It also addresses anxieties of people all over who are overwhelmed with how fast technology is moving and encourages them to just "do something now."

"As companies grow, in the age of the internet, they are drowning in electronic documents. Some people get so many e-mails each day that they don't even bother opening them. Official documents are nice, but they are no way to communicate." This article encourages and promotes the use of videos to communicate and tell stories.