Final blog reflection on teaching and learning with Web 2.0 tools

 Final blog reflection on teaching and learning with Web 2.0 tools

You have has a chance to personally participate with different web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning as well as evaluate specific tools. Take a moment and write a final reflection on the advantages of using these types of tools within learning environments and activities. 

What are some of the strengths and affordances of these types of tools?These tools allow for a specialized learning environment to be created in every classroom. The creation of a classroom blog as shared space for students and teachers would be a good choice.                For example: I am teaching a 6^th grade History class, I create a blog to introduce my class to World War I. The night before beginning the unit, I would post the question, “What do you know about World War I?” to the blog and require students to post a response, as well as comment on another student’s response, by a certain time that evening. By using this approach I would hope to generate excitement, and then as students post facts, tried to outdo one another with more facts, or disagreed with one another on their historical interpretations the students would become more engaged in the topic. This would also allow me to determine the students’ knowledge and misconceptions before I begin teaching on this topic.

  What types of affordances will you look for in new tools that are developed in the future? I will look at all Web 2.0 tools as a possible solution to any learner challenge that might come up in the classroom. For every issue there is some type of tool to assist the learner with learning in the way that helps the student excel in the classroom, it will be important to keep up with the rapid changing technologies to best serve the students. I would look for feedback from other teachers and evaluations from users of the technology to help be determine if I need to spend the time to learn to apply this tool in my classroom.

 What are some of the pitfalls of these types of tools? Mainly I think there is just so many of them available, that the time to investigate them might be more than many teachers can take away from there lesson planning. 

 What are some of the things you wish to avoid in web 2.0 tools of the future? My main concern with using any Web 2.0 tool is student safety. Technology is not always reliable,and some times students become distracted when using web tools. A students conduct while online is important, we need to make sure we are allowing students to learn, but we are protecting the ethics of our school.