Web 2.0 Tools

After some exploration on "The 100 Best Web 2.0 Tools" website, I came across a couple useful looking ideas. The first is called Teaching Channel, a site that contains hundreds of useful videos focusing on teaching strategies. The videos include interviews with teachers about an array of topics including ELL students, project-based learning, motivation and student-advisor relationships. The videos also include a lot of in-class examples, filming of real students in classrooms. There are many lesson plans demonstrated through these videos, which I will find super useful in the future when I'm building my own classroom units.

The second 2.0 tool that I found to be pretty cool is called Eyejot. It's a site that allows you to send short video messages to anyone (but in this case, students) on your computer or handheld phone. This could be really helpful for teachers who have students who respond more effectively to verbal instructions rather than ones written down. Sending video-assignments might create a stronger sense of relevance for students, thus encouraging them to get more of their homework done on time and/or understanding the assignment more thoroughly.

I also found a couple articles on the Spigot website useful/entertaining. The first one, (although I'm unsure of whether it's a joke or not) is pretty hilarious for an English major like me. Rick Anderson writes on the Scholarly Kitchen blog that, "At this year's annual meeting of the American Library Association in Las Vegas, there will be a special performance by the Oxford Commas, a band composed of librarians and university press editors who are dedicated to raising the grammatical standard in popular music." It's brilliant. They feature grammatically correct songs such as "Whom do you Love?" and "Julio and Me Down by the School Yard." Would be a great and funny article to show to a classroom full of English students.

The last article I found was one in which I very much disagreed with the point of view. It came from a personal blog that talks about educational transitioning toward a more technological world. This particular article was about the shift from reading in books to reading on "machines." But he argues for the advantages of reading from computers/kindles/iPads for many reasons, while making some pretty outlandish statements. For example, he writes what if, "The machine could learn their readers preferences, nuances, 'intelligence', etc. and tailor assistive materials and experiences to the reader to maximize enjoyment and comprehension?" If the machine did indeed advance enough that it could do these things, then the role of an English teacher would be nonexistent. And students would spend an even greater time on screens instead of communicating with real humans. I think the role of paper books is important, and no matter how advanced these "reading machines" can get, they will never replace the traditional role of text on paper.