Standstill...

I seem to have brought my blog to a standstill. I was having so much fun and now that fun has turned into frustration at the highest degree. I am able to post but I can't see my own posts. Web 2.0 is still awesome!

I was thinking about this the other day. In our co-hort, one of our students wanted to know if we could do our final assignment using one of the many Web 2.0 tools available to us. This student was told that as we are in an advanced program, the university still wanted to see paper. In this case, the paper was to be twenty pages long. Do you think our universities will ever advance their evaluation standards to include Web 2.0 tools? Can you visualize a university where papers were no longer necessary as long as there was evidence through one of the Web 2.0 tools? Just a thought.

I am now also a twitter!

http://twitter.com/home

This is my twitter homepage. I think I will give this one a try too. I am like Rosalena said in her blog, I am having a blast and becoming a computer addict. I just have to get some work done on my AR paper as I sit her every night blogging.

Dene and Proud Wordle

I have tried attaching this word wordle as a link but it wouldn't let me, so I did a Print Screen, saved it to my picture file and added it here as an image.

Having fun playing in the sandbox...

I've had so much fun playing in the sandbox, I forgot that it was work for my masters! Just a thought; how much time do we as teachers, especially high school teacher, have on any given day to give our students the opportunity to play? Should we give them as much time as possible to create and recreate web 2.0 tools during their allotted school time without the classroom teachers feeling guilty? Would you like to think that our schools would allow teachers to make those decisions on their own without feeling any amount of guilt as long as they are following the curriculum?

What do you think of this?

I found this amazing calendar from an English teacher who plans on a calendar exactly like we are doing in this class, but, the teacher also included reading from text by including the text (somehow, maybe by taking a picture of it) so that the students can read. There are also questions following the reading that one would normally find in an English textbook. I can't paste the link here because it says it is scripted? If you want to view it, go to the resource page and find the link for wordle, click on Aristotle Experiment and view student pages.

My views......

Are your uses of these tools going to maintain traditional “teaching and classroom models” as these authors have observed, or will they help you transform teaching and learning and if so how and why?


I can honestly say that I have transformed my teaching practises to include web 2.0 tools. I have started blogging with my Communication Studies 20 students. I think that I want to include some form of a web tool to show them that there are many ways of communicating. They seem to enjoy the fact that I can respond and make comments on their blogs as well as view my blog. I have moved a great distance in my use of Web 2.0 from just barely turning on the computer to helping others in my school with their own Internet/computer problems and dilemmas. The distance can be measured by looking at my teaching day plans and at my student evaluation. I haven't had the opportunity to "play" in the sandbox with the many tools that are available, but what I have used so far are both amazing and frustrating. I want my students to experience success as well as feel the exhilaration as they venture into the unknown. That is my ultimate goal. Isn't this what every teacher wants for their students? Shouldn't students feel that they are somewhat 'in control' of their learning? What do think would happen if all teachers today decided to swish their practises to include Web 2.0 tools in their teaching practises?

Two Hours of Nothingness....

I have been sitting at my post (literally) for the last two hours, trying to post a link to my wordle, that I was so proud of when I completed it. But for some reason beyong my control, it would not let me post it to my blog. My computer froze and I was left sitting, looking at my wordle freeze and then disappear. It was quite funny. So if you see a wandering wordle somewhere in outer cyberspace, send it back to me, please.