Web+2.0

** Web 2.0 Assignment ** ** Web 2.0 in education can be a very difficult task to sophistically and “properly” implement it into school use. As I was first reading about the web 2.0 sites such as Facebook, Blogger, and YouTube I wasn’t sure how any of these kinds of websites would be used in school. Then after looking at all the developmental tools from the wiki site, it’s amazing how many sites are out there that can be used for educational purposes. I would say I have never heard of ninety nine percent of these websites. The question I would like to know is how long have these been out there? Many of these tools would have become resourceful for me in my high school and current college career. I’m saving this website with these tools. I have a field experience currently at a middle school. I’ve been trying to find ways to try things in a classroom setting, and after this gold mine of useful information I’m going to try and use a few of these websites. As an aspiring math teacher many of these tools are hard to use for mathematical purposes but I did narrow it down to five good ones that would be most useful. ** ** The first Web 2.0 tool I found most useful was the Jeopardy Labs. This one struck me the most because it’s something I could relate to. Back when I was in high school we had something like this in my classes growing up in high school. Before tests or exams, we would have a jeopardy review in my history class. Even though Jeopardy is more of an intellectual game used more for knowledgeable questions such as history, English, and historic people. There is an easy way to shift it into a mathematical subject. The topics that students would choose from would be specific topics we discuss in class such as, Distributive Property, Boolean functions, and point slope. Then the questions would just be equations that they would need to solve and answer. Something like this makes it enjoyable for kids to learn. It creates a healthy learning environment and even helps with social building skills. When I did this in high school we were put in groups. I would do the same thing in my classroom setting, so that way kids can build ideas together and when one doesn’t understand another can show him/her how to get the proper answer. ** ** The second tool I found that would be fun and still have a learning curve to it was Quibblo. Quibblo is a website where they have fun, survey’s, polls, and quizzes. You can also make your own quiz and take other quizzes that other people have posted. I think this is a cool idea to have in the beginning or end of class. Using this kind of helps relieve the tension and stress that’s in the classroom. What I would probably do for the most part is ask a fun trivia question off topic such as pop culture or just a fun fact in the start of class. I’m a person who likes to have a little fun on the job, so having something like this to get the kids thinking and having fun at the same time is a cool idea. ** ** Another tool that I found interesting, cool, and a lot of fun at the same time was called Auditorium. This is a critical thinking tool that has to deal with math. It’s a great idea because there is no specific way to get the answer, so it helps kids become creative in their own way. So what you have to do in short is take this wave and use arrows to connect it to the ending space. ** ** It’s really not too tough it’s just harder to explain. While your figuring out the problem there is also some soothing music to go along with it. You might be thinking what the heck does that have to do with learning how to solve this puzzle? Well research actually shows soothing melodies as in orchestral music such as Beethoven and Mozart helps the human mind relax and think more clearly. Research shows that listening to classical music with sixty beats per minute helps trigger both sides of our brains, this in turn helps maximize our learning ability. As I was trying to solve this puzzle the music helped relax and make things a little less stressful. ** ** As I was surfing the site I came across some graphing tools for mathematical equations. This I had to write about because not only is it a visual tool, but a resourceful tool that kids can use at home or at school. In high school, not every kid has a graphing calculator. This may be for a few different reasons. For one, when kids take their SAT’s or ACT’s in high school they aren’t allowed to assist the child in the test taking process. For that reason many people don’t invest in buying one, which leads me to my next point. Graphing calculators aren’t the cheapest things to buy. A good one to start off runs just at about ninety dollars, which may not seem a lot to some people but for the kids whose families are less fortunate that is an expensive purchase for school. Not only that but graphing isn’t an everyday thing so that also creates another reason some wouldn’t want to spend the money. I’m sure as technology progress’s years from now they may not cost as much, but as a current stand point they are a little pricey. Trying not to get too off topic, with the online graphing calculator I could use it in a classroom setting to help kids see things a little better. Again like I said before, showing what something looks like on the board will help the ones who don’t have a calculator. ** The last Web 2.0 tool that I would most likely use is QuizzEgg. QuizzEgg is almost like Quibbo, you can use it in the same way except with QuizzEgg you can build automatically graded quizzes and be able to read them in a report. It sounds really lazy but with something like this I could have kids do assignments on the computer and have it graded without me raising a finger. I wouldn’t use this as a primary education tool. For me I believe kids need to visually be able to see math on paper or on a board. With a computer you type in the answer and if you get it wrong then it’s just that, it’s wrong. At least with writing it out a child can visually see his or her mistake by going back through her or his work and seeing at what step where they miscalculated something. QuizzEgg could be used for seeing where kids are at in the class. Basically after completing a chapter I could have kids take a QuizzEgg test and see how much they understood it and be able to help the one’s that aren’t understanding what’s going on as much. This is just another way to get more things done in less time. When I first looked at web 2.0 I was a little worried on how we could use “social networks” for school use. Because when I think of social networks I tend to think of things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and myspace. The wikisite that we had to visit is incredible. As I said before there are a lot of those things that I can even use now. One for example is the online storage. There are things that I want to share with my family but can’t fit everything over email because email’s have a certain limit on what you can send. But with this website that I discovered I can keep up to two gigabytes of storage and have anyone that you want to access it, that’s pretty cool. I’m sure as technology progress’s there are going to be more beneficial things to our use. I mean I can’t even wrap my head around what else people can start to do online; I was surprised just from that website. I really am interested in the future what we can use to our power to help kids learn in school.

Web 2.0 has tools that are found online that are free and can be used for the greater use of knowledge. With the expansion of technology I believe I’ll be able to implement web based tools into Math class. I can use things such as an online graphing calculator to show graphs in the class. Kids can then also use these utensils at home to further their knowledge.