Journal 5

     Of the Web 2.0 technologies covered in the podcast, I would say that blogs and Diigo are the most useful classroom tools. These tools seem very effective as they allow for teachers to monitor what students are publishing online and how they are interacting with one another. Specifically, blogs allow for students to have an online publishing platform where they have an audience. This gives students some freedom while also allowing teachers to oversee what they are positing. Diigo allows for students to share resources online with their classmates. When students post on this platform, they are posting to a classroom page, which allows teachers to view their content. These tools support teacher professional development as teachers can responsibly oversee their students. On the other hand, I would say that Web 2.0 technologies such as Wikis and Twitter are less useful in the classroom. This is because it makes student collaboration more difficult while also making it harder for teachers to oversee what students are posting. 

     It is well known that an essential part of teaching is collaboration. Edmodo is an interesting Web 2.0 tool that allows for teachers, parents, and students to communicate among each other on an online platform. This resource was widely used at my high school and I found it to be very effective. Of course, Edmodo allowed us to have class discussions online, which is its main purpose. However, this tool also allowed our teachers to assign us online homework and communicate important deadlines to us. These are only a few of Edmodo's tools. As a teacher, I plan to explore the parent aspect of Edmodo more in depth as this wasn't done much at my high school. I will use this tool to involve families in their child's learning by informing them of due dates, important classroom announcements, and any events that may be going on. 

Check out this awesome resource for yourself: https://www.edmodo.com

     Chapter 12 lists various technology advancements that seem very promising for education. However, I believe that the most promising is gesture based displays. These displays allow for students to interactively view images in 3D. Students would be able to interact with this technology. This technology could be utilized in virtual frog dissections. Students could explore frog's body parts and learn how to identify them. They could do this by virtually opening the frog and pin pointing its various body parts. I expect that teachers will begin to implement this tool more as they see it showing successful results.

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