Blog Post #5

Some Web 2.0 tools that I think are extremely beneficial to teachers and the classroom are YouTube and blogs. Like it mentioned in the podcast, YouTube is a great way to "Locate and share relevant videos with their students during lessons." This can give the teacher the ability to present information in a more exciting and stimulating way to his/her students, create playlists for assignments or extra helpful resources, and also watch videos of other lessons/classroom interactions by teachers to get a view on how he/she can take on the lesson in their classroom. Also mentioned in the podcast, blogs can be used as a "student publishing platform" that enables the teacher to keep track of student progress on assignments and understanding of concepts in their writing, as well as give the students a way to share their academic thoughts with their "audience" on the internet. This also helps students grow in their ability to present information in an efficient way and defend that information with evidence and reasoning. Some web 2.0 tools I was able to think of that would not be beneficial to teachers and the classroom are Facebook and Instagram. Facebook is a social networking tool that is mostly for friends and family relationships, not educational purposes. Plus, teachers aren't even allowed to be friends with students on Facebook until after they graduate, making it impossible for it to be a platform to be used in the classroom anyway. Instagram is also a social networking tool that is largely used for friends and family, with in my opinion, no clear educational opportunities at all. This would also make it inappropriate to be used as an informational platform for students.

One of the web 2.0 tools listed that I found interesting was Scribd. It is an online audiobook library with endless options of books and documents. I see this tool as a great way for students that have reading disabilities or trouble reading at a timely pace to read required books along with the audio to help keep up with the required reading. This could be used by students in elementary school all the way up to high school, and maybe even college. You can start with a free month trial, which is great if a student or teacher is unsure if the program is right for them, and can give it a shot without losing any money. Here's a link to the web tool: https://www.scribd.com/

I believe the the technology advancement that holds the biggest promise for education is gamification. It definitely isn't a new tool to teachers, but I believe its growth over the years, as well as future its potential, makes it an awesome tool for teachers to use inside and outside of their classrooms.  Gamification, as the book states, "adds game elements to instructional content to increase motivation and interactivity, encourage creativity, and deepen understanding of content. If you ask me, that encompasses everything that a teacher, parent, and school board as well want for their students. Throughout my schooling, especially elementary school, educational games were a huge staple in the classroom. Online programs that had games in order to prepare us students for the FCAT, FAIR, and even general topics gone over in the classroom were apart of my education for a number of years. For my younger sister, Leapfrog played a HUGE role in her learning how to read and work with word pronunciation and sentence structures. Nowadays, I see commercials for online programs like ABC Mouse, that is made up of educational games to get younger kids to work on topics ranging from spelling and grammar all the way to basic mathematics. Through analyzing all of these different forms of gamification, I can confidently say that it will continue to positively impact students throughout schooling, and continue to grow into even more of an incredibly useful classroom tool.