Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 tools are indispensable in my classroom today, especially since I teach 8^th graders with a 1:1 program.  Here are a few I the use most.  We access the simulations from PhET with almost every unit we teach.  They provide lesson plans and activities that we adapt to our content and standards.  The simulations allow kids to try activities that we can’t physically perform (building atoms) or demonstrate safely (overloaded circuits).  They also cater to differentiation as well as student choice.  

Another tool I use almost daily is Google.  We use Google Drive for individual as well as collaborative work.  My students can share a writing assignment with me for proofreading or they can work on a group project and share it with me for feedback.  Using Google Drive allows me to see who is doing what work (revision history) as well as monitor the content and provide questions or comments.  We also use Google Drive for class reviews.  Students add content, descriptions, explanations, and organization to study guides.  I’m also a contributing member and can clarify questions while also adding content specific to the assessment.  

All teachers in our building post our daily assignments to our individual Google Calendar while my team teachers and I do all our planning on our team one as well.  (I haven’t used a spiral bound planbook in about 10 years!)  As a team, we also use Google Drive for our team minutes, letters home, field trip requests, and Budget POs.  Finally, we use the Google Forms for surveys, classroom feedback, entrance/exit slips, and grade level sign-ups.  They are very user friendly and quick to put together.

Finally, I heavily rely on Diigo for bookmarking.  I love the ability to create the list of links I want my kids to visit for specific activities while having the ability to organize them as well as annotate when necessary.  I also share sites with my colleagues and tag many sites for future use.  I know that Pinterest has similar uses and has the image perspective, but I worry that there are so many distractions and alternate directions kids can go, that I'll lose their attention quickly.  Like I’ve said, I need a little more time to work with Pinterest, I remember struggling when I switched from Delicious to Diigo.  It would be cool if I could embed Pinterest boards into my Google webpage, but it looks like you provide a link to it instead.  Another asset that Diigo has is the highlighting and commenting feature.  I like highlighting a specific section and having kids provide feedback as to its importance, or leaving a guiding question and having them search for support within the text for their answer.  It’s difficult to think of using just Web 1.0 at this point in time since Web 2.0 tools have become such an integral component of my teaching.