Web+2.0

As a future English teacher, I chose five tools I felt would benefit the learning experience of the students. The five tools I will write about are presentation, research, audio, writing, and organizing. Within each tool I have selected one website that best fits my teaching style. I will begin with the presentation tool of 280 slides that allows students to learn from visual literacy. 280 slides is a slick website that is structured around slideshow presentations. I chose the website because of its straightforward and simple approach of being able to easily upload videos, photos, and documents. As a teacher, I would be able to use 280 slides as a slideshow lesson plan and upload the slideshows on the internet for students to access. I enjoy being able to incorporate media in my teaching and this will make students more interested in the material and likely be able to relate to the material more easily. I say this because students are going to be more engaged in visual learning from watching a video or viewing photos rather than learning the same material from simple tools of a marker and whiteboard. For example, I typed ‘English language’ and ‘Family Guy’ in the search engine of youtube.com and found a clip that involved British and American speaking people. I would upload this video clip on 280 slides and use this in my teaching lesson by having students watch the clip and then write a reflection paper based on the different phonological sounds from American and British speaking people. I chose this clip because Family Guy is a popular show amongst teens and would better grab their attention rather than trying to relay the same information by writing it on a whiteboard. Using 280 slides will make me more organized and better prepared for my teaching lessons. Also, this is a website that students are capable of using. For example, students will have to write a research paper and then present the material to the class. I will have the students present the material through 280 slides and incorporate fun and interesting themes into their slideshow by using such tools as youtube and flickr. The written project and presentation of the students will be better put together by using research tools, which is my next topic. The website that I found most helpful in the research tool section was Ultimate-Research-Assistant.com. This easy to use website functions by typing a name of topic in the search engine and the tool will perform research on your topic and generate a concise research report summarizing your topic. While ultimate research assistant is not a flashy website, it does provide sufficient amount on information pertaining to any area of interest. I enjoy this website as an English teacher because it gives students an extensive list of online resources that they can include in research paper. Also, this will allow students to become familiar with using the internet as a research tool by looking up reliable websites. For example, I would assign a paper topic on 20th Century American Authors and students would have to research an author that we have talked about in class. By using Ultimate Research Assistant, students would be able to find an author of their interest and find important facts relating to the author. One way of preparing for a presentation is by using audio tools to listen to your own voice. In the audio tools section, I was most impressed with Audacity’s website. Already being familiar with the website from our previous assignment, I felt that this would be of value to me as a teacher. Audacity would allow teachers and students to create audio files which can be used to practice skills of listening, speaking, and pronunciation. I would have students record their presentation on Audacity and we would listen to the audio together and make improvements which include pitch, flow, and pronunciation. This will help students become better public speakers by listening to themselves talk and acknowledging any mistakes. For example, a student may be oblivious of repeating the words ‘um’ and ‘like’ when speaking. Audacity will reveal any fluency disruption and allow the speaker to be conscious of using the words in speaking situations. Audacity would allow me to record my lectures and upload them to a server available to the students. This would help students become better listeners by taking notes on the recorded lectures and being able to use Audacity’s tools of tempo change, pause affect, and repeat, to slow down the audio and be able to fully understand the material. Also, I may upload an audio clip from a scene in a book onto Audacity and have students write a reflection paper based on the clip. Their writing skills will be improved from the website bookrix.com, which is part of the writing tools section. Bookrix.com is a website that allows students and teachers to read online books for free. The importance of this website as a teacher is that students are exposed to various reading material that includes poetry, essays, short stories, etc. that helps student’s imagination that helps keep them interested in learning. Also, by reading books written by good authors, the student is able to pick up on writing techniques and tools that they may apply in their own language. Reading will also help enrich their vocabulary by becoming familiar with new words and looking up the new words in a dictionary. Bookrix is a great website for students to use because it makes reading and accessing books at the ease of a mouse click. Two features that I enjoy about Bookrix is the capabilities of writing a reflection of a book and being able to send the author a message. As a teacher I may have students choose a short story to read and write a reflection paper and use specific examples from the text. Bookrix allows readers to easily access page numbers and write comments on certain excerpts. The wide span of reading material that Bookrix offers will allow students to expand their curiosity and knowledge on certain topics. This will motivate the kid to read and write because it is a topic that they are interested about. All four tools I have written about can be categorized in the final tool of organizing. I have chosen the website webspiration that would organize my presentation, research, audio, and writing tools. Webspiration allows teachers and students to brainstorm ideas, visualize concepts, organize information and collaborate with others at anytime. Webspiration is a great tool for visual thinking, writing, studying, and learning. As a teacher, I would benefit from using this website to organize my work into the tools of idea mappings, chapter or book outlines, and English language diagram. For example, when teaching about descriptive writing I would use an idea mapping to separate each of the five senses into their own category (touch, smell, hear, sight, taste). I would then give descriptive examples of each in branching down to another category (Smell-bacon, hear-cars, taste-sweet). Webspiration creates visual learning creates clarity in information that may be too complex to understand in any other terms. Students are able to make connection from visual learning, as demonstrated when they make the connection of bacon as a descriptive smell. Webspiration allows me to organize all my lesson plans and be able to upload the information to students online. This assignment made me aware of the great online tools that can be used in a teaching environment. Although, I only elaborated on five websites, I know that there are many other tools I can incorporate as a teacher. Each website I explored was easy to use and presented a lot of helpful information.