Week Seven: Web 2.0

This week we were assigned to pick a Web 2.0 tool that we would we use in the classroom. The tool I choose is Discovery Education http://www.discoveryeducation.com/. This tool isn't just for educators it's also for students and for parents. With the resource you can get involved in all different content areas. For teachers it's an excellent tool to have with making lesson plans and developing creative activities for the students. For students it is an excellent tool to help them homework in the area they are having trouble with (math, science, social studies etc). They can also play games and explore different activities. For parents it is a resource to get kids motivated with the motivation station, or helping with homework when they need it, or to just give activity ideas to parents for fun family gatherings. So all around this tool is great for everyone.

This week we also were assigned the research of the Dana Foundation at http://www.dana.org/. This site is phenomenal with all the information and articles available on the brain and what it does for our learning. After reading all kinds of essays and publications I was intrigued to think about all the different ways to teach students. In one of the articles it talked about art and cognition and how dancing can contribute to a lot a learning. Which really touched my heart because I have always enjoyed dancing and the different forms there are of it. There were a lot more articles that were interesting so if you would like to learn about the brain and how you learn I would definitely visit the Dana Foundation website. 

For our Tech Explorations we had to search a few different resources on the web. The one that I enjoyed the most looking at was Historypin at http://www.historypin.com/ . This resource is so fascinating because it's all about history. In this resource you can search pins all over the world. On the site you can also search history with the date, the place or origin, or the name of the event. There are also tours and collections that people have created to share information about a specific events. Also you can create you own collections and tours if you would like. This resource is an excellent tool for history/social studies teachers, because they could assign a project where the students get on the Historypin site and create their own collection on an event in history that intrigues them.

I hope you all enjoyed my blog this week and learned some interesting information like I did.