I am so lucky to have taken this class because the focus was on blogging. Now, some of my friends have blogs, but they write about their personal lives. I'm much more interested in how blogs can be used in my classroom, and I feel overwhelmed by ideas. Web 2.0 is the future of education, and I want to be the one that persuades my system into opening up blogs to its students. Once they see how successful students can be with such powerful tools, administrators might be more open to opening up other tools.
I make my students keep journals in my class, and I've noticed over the last two years that fewer and fewer of my students are bringing in the specific spiral-bound notebook that I request. That problem is easily remedied with a blog. Even if a student has to stay after school to complete the assignment, he always has the required "notebook."
Long before I started Full Sail, I learned about iTunesU and had downloaded several classes that I thought were interesting. Eventually I listened to enough of them and kept the ones that actually were interesting. Right now, I've got five lectures made by Alice Walker that I want to use in the future when I teach Modern and Contemporary Literature. Even if I don't use iTunesU in my classroom, I still benefit from the podcasts. I learn more about my content area just by listening to the lectures, and I can then choose to include the content in my own curriculum.
Twitter is another Web 2.0 tool that I'm eager to use in my classroom; however, I know that this site is blocked in many districts. I've written about Twitter's potential in the classroom before, so I won't go into a lot of detail here.
I'm almost giddy with my new-found knowledge of Web 2.0 and the ideas I have to use the various tools in my classroom. My plan is to revamp my entire American Literature curriculum so that I use Web 2.0 in every lesson every day.
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