Web+2.0

Ismet Yilmaz

It was really surprising to see that there were so many Web 2.0 tools that I did even know about. They all are designed for different purposes. I researched each of the Web 2.0 tools.

First, I really liked the “Prezi”site. It allows people to create amazing presentations that are completely different and more advanced than PowerPoint. Instead of traditional PowerPoint slides, it is like digital storytelling. Instead of several different slides, the slides look like they are on the same page but they flow very beautifully and smoothly. It creates a visual image of different ideas, while flowing through each of them. It includes pictures, colors, varied print sizes and shapes, all in a map-like presentation.

Prezi is very easy to use in class. To create a presentation, you put all your thoughts on a digital canvas. If you need more space, you just expand the canvas and have more space. As an example of how it would be used in class, a teacher may zoom in or out on the text, which means students can see the more important text or images the teacher focuses on. This zooming option also can be used to show the meaning of a word that students are not familiar with. The meaning of the word can be written with a very small text and if it is necessary, teacher can zoom out to show the students the meaning of the word on the same page of the presentation. I registered on the Prezi website, as I think I will use Prezi in my class when I become a teacher.

The blogger is another Web 2.0 tool that I liked. It is a site that lets you creat blogs. It has wonderful templates that let you customize your blog’s layouts, font sizes and colors. People can use the sites to upload movies or photos from their phones, as well as share thoughts and solutions about a certain topic and find people that share similar interests. The blogger also serves as a personal diary. People can enter their thoughts about their political views, religion, and sports. Also, you can actually control the access to your blog. They can also delete the any comment they don’t like. For use in class, I think the blogger would be a good tool to use to communicate with parents. Each day, you could post on the blog what happened in class, including specific facts on each child. For example, “Today, we created a science project using bugs and habitats…Sally was especially creative…Bobby and Joey displayed good teamwork when they….” You could spend only 15 minutes telling parents about the day and they would probably love the specific information, on which they could comment. I would also include information on how special each child is, including his or her strengths and weaknesses. I could schedule picnics, camps, and other activities and parents could discuss the details on the blog. I could use it to recruit volunteers for those activities. At the beginning of each year, I could post my bio, and my family’s picture, so parents know more about their kids’ teacher. I could even let parents ask me questions anonymously to encourage their participation. They could give me anonymous feedback too. You could set it up so that only parents could have access, not students. I could also create pages students have access to. In sum, blogger is a good communications tool.

The next Web 2.0 tool I liked was RSS Feeds. Using RSS Feeds, students can pick certain topics, and with them, subscribe to some international or local news, and then get daily updates on their browsing window. Using RSS Feeds, we can discuss current events in the classroom, which are within the students’ areas of interest. I think, today many students don’t read newspapers. RSS Feeds might be a great tool to assign students some daily newspaper articles to read and have them bring a summary of the articles to the classroom. I think this would be a very useful to promote reading for students and it is something which would teach them to research events and discuss them with their classmates.

Another interesting Web2.0 tool is Google docs. It allows you to create and share documents on the web, including presentations, drawing, and spreadsheets, and work on them together with other people online, simultaneously. It also allows you to edit the documents by accessing them anywhere you have an Internet access. In class or as homework, students could work together on the same document and jointly prepare a presentation or drawing.

WoframAlpha is another useful Web 2.0 tool. It lets you calculate or convert any question that you want answered. It is a wonderful tool to know facts about anything. The list of information that one can search is pretty long. For instance, topics range from earth science to astronomy, food and nutrition, materials, health and medicine, computational science, web and computer systems money, finance, life science and people history are some of the topics on WoframAlpha. I can use this website for my own class research. I can also make my students use it as a source for their homework. Another in-class use would be that I would ask students to pick a topic, and I would provide them the information. For example, they would give me five historical people and I would search WoframAlpha and give them facts on the topic.