MERLOT Exploration

I just registered for MERLOT, and found it overwhelming how many resources, applications, and educational software there was available. Everything is peer reviewed and commented on, making it easier to find the most useful resources for your particular area or subject of interest. One subject area that I have found myself more and more fascinated with are Web 2.0 applications. These applications are the future of computing due to their cloud computing compatibility, ease of collaboration over time zones and nations, and ease of storage and accessibility. I found an extremely useful resource on MERLOT that was given a distinguished award by them. It is a collection of Web 2.0 technologies on a page entitled Web 2.0 Technologies: Cool Tools for School. App's are broken up into categories and given small review snippets on how they work. I explored these lists for a while, and they are HUGE! With so many resources in one place, this website is sure to become a Web 2.0 bible for me once I start my job this August. My following review is based on this website.

The url is: http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/

The MERLOT page is at: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=353806

Quality of Content

 This site has a tremendous amount of content that is well organized and constantly updated due to the fact that it is a wiki site with many contributors. It has apps for every conceivable subject area for thousands of different uses. The focus is on educational Web 2.0 applications, so the uses for education are far-reaching. Any kind of teacher at nearly any grade level could find some use for some of these applications. The presentation applications are very precisely detailed to their possible uses. The writing app's are great for students trying to improve their writing or getting their writing reviewed and edited by educators and professionals. I could go on and on, but this site has too many resources to write about.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool

 Teachers could use this resource to design completely new lesson plans that revolve around these very powerful Web 2.0 technologies. Whether it be presentations, collaborative projects, or homework assignments, the sky is the limit to what can be done with all of these great tools. Students could also use this site to find different applications and approaches to doing a project, like perhaps doing a Prezi presentation instead of a powerpoint presentation, or creating interactive maps for geography and history classes. A teacher could give the kids a very open-ended project and give it to the student the url to this website and have them learn these tools themselves to create a totally new type of project.

Ease of Use

This site is very easy to use. The organization is very simplistic and straight-forward. If you want your kids to do something with music, click on the music link for a list of Web 2.0 app's relating to music. The write-ups for the app's are well done and give a brief yet informative description of what the program can do and the audience that it would be useful for. It is obviously a very flexible resource.

Personal Introduction

My first screencast! Just a little introduction to who I am and what I do for CEP 812. Check it out:

Screencast

Personal Growth Plan Reflection

My Personal Growth Plan centered around learning Web 2.0 applications better, and I feel that this course has really helped me to do that. I have gained extensive knowledge of blogs, RSS, ning, twitter, and many other types of online software that I will definitely be implementing in the classroom is some way, shape, or form. When it comes to integrating technology in the classroom, I have learned plenty of methods in which I could use to further students skills with technology. Firstly, through doing our group project online with collaborative web 2.0 software, I have learned how to plan, create, and edit presentations without direct communication due to geographic location difference. I think these skills will benefit me in communication with classroom teachers when I do start my job in communicating and designing lesson plans that most benefit the students technology skills and their classroom learning. I have also learned plenty of interesting software that my students could use in creating projects such as prezi and blogger. I will be employing these types of software to both keep my classes organized and having students create through these mediums.

I feel as though angel is a great platform to teach this course through because at its core Angel is somewhat of a Web 2.0 application, which a large portion of this class focused on. Using the internet for most of our portfolio projects, whether that be social media, web 2.0 apps, or flickr, really emphasized the shift in technology towards web and cloud based computing and shifted my focus of teaching towards using these technologies to benefit students. I think that the RSS blog post was a great project because it incorporated blogs, rss feeds, screenshots, and other types of technology to create. This forced me to learn many new types of technology all at once, something that I really appreciated as in quickly caught me up to the demands of this course. Any assignment that used blogger was great because everything was posted online in a shareable area that all of our classmates could observe and enjoy. I also thought the forum communication on Angel is a great method of communication and it helps students educate and learn from other students, which reenforces our own knowledge that we already learned. The adobe presentations were also a great forum to ask questions, share knowledge, and communicate with one another. The main thing that I have taken away from this course in the capabilities of technology today in the realms of communication and collaboration. There are so many resources online to publish ideas, read opinions, and peer-review other professionals work.

I feel that I have gone above and beyond my expectations for myself in many regards. I have learned a great deal about Web 2.0 applications and their abilities in learning technology. The student presentations also really expanded my knowledge in specific areas such as tablet learning and technology for those with disabilities. I think those projects were a great capstone to everything we have learned in this course because they went outside of the learning in this class and really showed all of the areas of technology that are out there. Overall, I thought this was a great course because I really did learn a lot in the realm of technology in education.