WEB+2.0

Today's Web 2.0 has changed things for all people with access to internet, including educators at all levels. With Web 2.0 communication and the sharing of ideas, information, pictures, and more, is no longer isolated to the person possessing them, now anyone can access these resources at anytime from anywhere as long as they can access the internet. Five less commonly known Web 2.0 tools will be addressed; Prezi, Podcast, Second Life, RSS Feed, and Google Docs.  Prezi in my eyes in an upgraded more creative and more appealing version of a PowerPoint presentation. The New York Times calls Prezi “ far beyond a simple slide show. (Prezi.com)” Prezi is a non linear presentation tool. Unlike PowerPoint you don’t simply go from slide to slide, and end up making numerous boring slides to shuffle through, With Prezi you start out with a big blank White space. You insert your information onto different areas of the space. You can add color, graphics, sounds, effects, and whatever else you may think of. You then choose how to organize the information and your presentation zooms to certain areas on your blank space rather than from page to page. I recently saw a few Prezi presentations in a class, and most of us in the class had never even heard of Prezi, but were intrigued, and impressed with it, It keeps attention much better than a PowerPoint presentation does.  Podcast are a great way to audibly share information to others with whom you can not directly speak. A podcast can be about anything. Making one is simple, there are many free resources that can be downloaded from the internet to help you in making your Podcast. Sounds can be added to aid in the information being conveyed, you can change volume, fade in and out, and add music as well. Podcasts can then be posted in a variety of ways. A podcast is a show, you can create multiple episodes if needed. I recently created my own Podcast to introduce myself to viewers of my wiki-space. Podcasting is an easy, simple, effective means for communicating a message audibly to others via the internet.  Second life is something I was completely unfamiliar with. At first glance it reminds me of the PC game The Sims. Second Life however is not a game, it is an interactive virtual world that launched on the internet in 2003. Users make their own avatar, and can communicate with other peoples avatars near them or around the world. It is free to join, there are premium accounts with have monthly fees. You can go shopping for virtually anything and change clothes as often as you wish, you can visit different destinations inspired by real cities around the world, users can travel via plane, flying carpet, ships, and can even fly. You can attend concerts, raves, lectures, and visit museums, and go to the theater, and join a book club. You can create your own house, or even space station. You can direct a movie, or launch a fashion line. Basically you can do anything you want in Second Life, even things that are not possible or realistic in real life.  RSS feed stands for Real Simple Syndication. RSS feed is a type of web feed used to publish works and information that is frequently updated. An RSS document is called a feed, and typically includes text as well as meta-data (publishing dates, authorship). RSS feed is often used by news sources as a means for keeping up to date information available to anyone anywhere around the world. Blogs are often published using RSS feed as well. To be able to read/view a RSS feed you must have the required software. The Software needed is called an RSS reader, feed reader, or aggregator. These software can be based in three different ways; either web based, desktop based, or mobile-device based ([]  ). Google makes a reader for RSS feeds as well: Google reader.  Google Documents is a collaborative online free word processing tool. To me it's like Microsoft Word for the internet. You can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and forms. With other word processing applications (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Works, or Open Office) once you create your document it is stuck in the computer you created it in, and can only be accessed from afar if you save it in your email, or onto a portable storage device such as a flash drive. When you use Google Docs to create a document or presentation (or for any of the other capabilities it has) you have access to the document you created anywhere that there is internet. You wont need to worry about your flash drive malfunctioning, your version of Word not being compatible with the computer you are trying to re-open it on, loosing it in the email, or not being able to open the attachment. No matter where you are you have access to your work as long as you have access to the internet. When making presentations or other documents you can invite others to contribute, edit or view your document, Making group work and collaboration easy.  Using these five Web 2.0 tools in my teaching would be beneficial to myself, my students, and the parents. I would like to use Prezi in place of a tool such as PowerPoint when lecturing. It would be useful for any lesson, especially science. The Prezi website has a presentation put together to outline how you can use Prezi to teach. I found the presentation very interesting and gave me good ideas. Since you do not simply go from side to side you can show a piece of text and if there is a word your students do not understand you can set your Prezi to zoom into that word and you can add the definition or a picture with it and then zoom back out the rest of the text  ([] ).  I would like to use a podcast as a means for communicating with students as well as parents. When I was in middle school we had what was called the Homework Hotline where our teacher would record the days assignments for students and parents to listen to. I would like to use Podcasting for a similar purpose. I would establish a website that was given to all students and parents with a daily podcast detailing the assignments for the day, as well as an additional podcast designed only for parents where I can relay important information to them, because in my experience notes sent home with students do not always make it to the parents.  Second Life seams very interesting and like it could be a lot of fun. There was some information on using it in education. However I do not think that I would like to do so. I plan to teach elementary school, ideally kindergarten to third grade, and I do not think Second life is a safe or appropriate tool for them because it such a complex social world, there are 20 million registered users and I would fear for the safety if the children around that many unknown people who could be posing as anyone. I also think with that age group parents would object to using second life as a means of instruction.  RSS feed could be beneficial to me in the same respect as the Podcast. I believe that communication with parents is extremely important. I would like to set up a site for parents which I already noted would feature a podcast, however adding a blog would be beneficial as well, especially for parents who are not English speakers, or have limited English abilities. I could make blog detailing the information in my podcast, and also use a translation tool to post a copy in a language that accommodates non English speaking parents. Not all people learn the same, and so by presenting information in two formats (audio and visual) I can appeal to more people.  Google Documents is probably my favorite of all of the Web 2.0 tools I looked at today. I love being able to access my work from anywhere. As a college student I have struggled with issues pertaining to documents I made on my computer. Using Google Docs would eliminate those problems. As a teacher I would like to use it personally for when I create a lesson plan or other class materials at home I can be certain that I would be able to easily access it at school. With older students who are at the level where they are typing documents, I would like to teach and encourage them to use it so that they can avoid the problems I have experienced with traditional word processing.