Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Delicious


During class today there was a presentation on a social bookmarking network called Delicious. We got the opportunity to make our own personal Delicious page and I really like it. My favorite part of Delicious is that the bookmarks you create are not stuck on one computer - they are accessible at any computer all the time. I can definitely see using this in my future classroom. I could have my students create their own personal Delicious page and I could tell them what websites to put on that page. Then during a computer center time I could just tell my students to go to their Delicious page and choose an educational website to play on. I could also see using it as a teacher to organize all of the educational websites you come upon either by subject (elementary) or by class section (middle school/high school). This could prevent loosing good websites and a great way to keep them all organized. I'm excited to start using Delicious in my personal and professional life! :o)


Thursday, April 16, 2009

Zotero




After using Zotero briefly in class today I really think it is a great source. I really like that it captures all of the bibliographic information because I know that I struggle finding all of that on a website especially. I think that implementing this in a classroom would be great and I think it would make researching and studying more fun for students. I like that its a hands-on resource for students to use that would really encourage using outside sources for projects, papers, etc. It is a little bit complicated at first but after watching a view tutorials and playing around with it, it becomes much easier to navigate.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Twitter - Straw Poll


A few of my classmates just did a presentation on Twitter. In all honesty, I didn't really get the point of Twitter at first, I didn't see much application for it in the classroom and it actually seemed a little egotistical for me. However after the presentation I am opening up to the idea...a little. I went out and searched for some applications that could be used in the classroom and to my surprise there were quite a few. I found one in particular that I like and it is call Straw Poll. This is where someone can create and answer polls on Twitter. I thought this would be a great way to start a unit about graphing and collecting data. Students could post a poll on Twitter about either a specified topic or one of their choosing and then analyze their data and present it to the class. Overall, I am not entirely sold on the concept of Twitter in the classroom but I do see some possible benefits and applications. But do the benefits outweigh the possible negatives? I'm not sure...