WebLog 5

Questions pertaining to Web 2.0 applications:

1) As a teacher, what range of Web 2.0 applications do you need to integrate into your web presence? I think that my web presence should integrate the Web 2.0 applications that my students frequently use for school, such as Google calendars, Turnitin.com, PowerSchool, & my class websites. I would also like to expose students to Web 2.0 applications that they could use for their own writing, such as Openzine, Comiqs, Glogster, Flicktion, or Dandelife.

2) What are your goals? My goals are to create a web presence that helps to better communicate with my students and to establish an area where they can find information that is helpful to their learning and that better illuminates our curriculum.

3) What are your students’ needs? My students have shared with me that some of their learning needs are to complete more creative assessments-- ones that are not just tests. Students would like information presented in more than just one way, and many students have shared their desire to collaborate with other students on projects.

4) How can you best facilitate communications with your students and their parents? I think that this is currently being done through my class websites and through the school's email system.

5) What about your principal’s expectations and/or concerns? I would think that a concern that my principal would have especially if I were to create a website where students can interact with each other is to make sure that this website was "policed" or that I would make sure that students would not post things that were inappropriate. However, our principal has urged all teachers to create class websites and has urged all teachers to become more technologically savvy in order to better serve the needs of our students.