Pb Works Web 2.0

This week I had the opportunity to work with a website that would help me create my own web space. The name of the site is Pb works. Although I had the chance to look through other facinating sites (Wix, Wiki, Googlesites) this is the one that I chose to do my lesson on plants. It can be found here: Plants Webquest. I can use these Web 2.0 tools, especially PB Works, to further interest my class in learning online. My students love working with computers, and working with this website will help them to become more active in their learning. I feel that this could also be helpful when sharing presentations with co-workers, and presenting information in classes. This is are very useful tools.
This is my first time creating an online webquest, and I am very proud to share my work with you.
I hope you enjoy!

Power Point Alternatives

I have spent the majority of this week learning about alternatives to Power Point. I have found many useful ones, however, the one that I chose to use is Prezi Presentations. Some of the things that really drew me into using this one was the ease of use. My Presentation is found here: My First Prezi: How to Write a Research Paper . I found Prezi to be just as effective as Power Point and since all of your presentations are saved online, I found it to be very portable as well. You can't really lose what's online. I can see myself using this as an alternative to Power Point on a regular basis since it was so easy for me to use. I could use this with my students as well. I could definitely see them getting some sort of enjoyment out of seeing their presentations online.

While browsing the web, and working on different activities I have have the opportunity to learn about many different web 2.0 tools. I have explored, so far, Nings/Wikis, Blogs, and Social Bookmarking. All of these I can see be useful for many different reasons, but all are beneficial in keeping myself organized in the classroom, or keeping in contact with my students and other like minded educators.

The first thing I activity that I learned about was social bookmarking with Delicious. Delicious is a great web 2.0 tool that allows you to keep all of your favorite websites and links to other materials in one place. I found it very helpful that you could also create tag bundles using tags that you can create for the website. This is a really good tool for keeping things organized, and since Delicious is online, there are no flash drives to remember or to keep track of.

The second tool that I learned about in my quest to learn more about web 2.0 tools are different educational blogs or Nings. These blogs are especially helpful because they allow you to talk with other educators, share ideas, or talk about some of the things that are impacting education today. I chose to join the Ning Classroom 20 found here at www.classroom20.com The blog that I chose to participate in was the blog on Arts and Crafts Develop Thinking Skills by Debora Wondercheck. I thought that this blog was a good one to comment on because I still believe that allowing children to express themselves creatively through art is a good stress reliever, and outlet. Art is essential to learning.

These are some of the educational blogs that I also found useful. Links include:

http://ilearntechnology.com/

http://web20intheclassroom.blogspot.com/

http://kathyschrock.net/edtechblogs.htm

http://www.teachthecloud.com/2011/04/top-5-ed-tech-blogs.html

http://langwitches.org/blog/

I am looking forward to learning more about various other Web 2.0 tools! I will certainly update on the ones that I learn about. Thanks for reading!

Tameka