Thing 13
I just played around with Quizlet, and enjoyed my experience. In fact, I signed up for an account and created an activity of my own. I love that this site allowed me to import a vocabulary list that I had already created and used my terms and definitions in new activities (Familiarize, Learn, Test, Play Scatter, Play Space Race). I can see my students especially liking to play the latter two activities.
I also noticed that there was a discussion box where you could add your comments and discuss the activity with other classmates. This feature is probably not necessary with just vocabulary terms and definitions, but it might be helpful with more difficult material.
Thing 12
I just viewed Drew Murphy’s presentation, Step by Step- Building a Web2.0 Classroom. This online conference would be very helpful for many teachers to view BEFORE taking the K12 Learning 2.0 class. Mr. Murphy does a beautiful job of demonstrating some basic skills needed to effectively implement web 2.0 techniques in the classroom. He breaks down his online conference into three sections: Explore and Participate, Deconstruct and Reconstruct, and Connect and Create. I suspect that many teachers know how to do most of the skills that Mr. Murphy demonstrates, but it never hurts to remind us of how to most effectively use these skills (I especially appreciated the tip on resizing photos to a proper file size before uploading to the web). Teachers who are not very experienced with using technology, but want to do so, would especially benefit from this online conference and have many of their web 2.0 fears alleviated. And EVERYONE could use a good chuckle after watching Vinnie Kebobolous’ guest appearances!
Thing 11: Slideshow
Please view my wiki page. You will find an embedded slide show at the bottom titled Over Sea, Under Stone Slide Show. Currently I am reading this novel with my 6th grade students, and I thought that I could better illustrate the setting of the story through actual pictures taken of various locales in Cornwall, England.
