My personal experience with 'New Tools'
A word cloud generated with wordle.net
Our first obligatory task is to create a portfolio entry presenting new tools and our personal experience with them. Hence, in this article I will reflect on my own background knowledge concerning new media tools and present further tools I came across in this class yet. In particular, I will go into detail about social bookmarking, the creation of websites with Weebly, and word clouds.
To be perfectly honest, I have always been interested in almost everything dealing with technology, the internet, Web 2.0, and so forth. Especially I have a preference for social platforms such as Facebook, Google +, and Twitter. Thus, I try to keep track of most technological developments and give those things a try if they are worth it.
With regard to my school time, I have to admit that times have changed: We neither had Smartboards nor did we make much use of the various possibilities the internet has to offer. Of course, the so-called "Web 2.0" with its new tools and potentials is a rather recent phenomenon, but the internet as such did already exist when I went to school and, even though we had a computer room, our teachers could not care less about it. However, schools and teachers need to face the status quo and adapt to the ongoing technological developments of our generation since technological gadgets such as smartphones and the internet have become a vital part of our society. That is why we as educators should be able to both deal with new media and evaluate its potential benefits for educational purposes.
The first tool I want to introduce is del.icio.us (or simply delicious). This website is a social bookmarking service for saving, organizing, sharing, and discovering bookmarked URLs. In other words, users can store bookmarks of websites they like in a stack and tag them with index terms describing the content and purpose of the respective page according to fitting categories. Furthermore, users can share their bookmarks on a personal profile page or work collaboratively by sharing and following their stacks with like-minded people.
I had heard of this tool before but never used it up to this point. Frankly, I was surprised how handy and versatile this web tool is and I can surely recommend using delicious! With regard to educational purposes, I would definitely suggest embedding it in class when it comes to web research or sharing websites with other students. Due to its easy usability - websites only need to dropped in the delicious bookmarklet - I will most likely use it in my future classes to provide my students with online sources and contribute additional material. For instance, delicious can contribute to online based projects and actively involve students when it comes to collecting sources from the web.
The same is true for Weebly - a platform that offers all the basics you need to create and edit a website (free of charge!). Weebly is pretty easy to handle with and makes publishing personal websites (blogs, portfolios, etc.) foolproof. It is really like shooting fish in a barrel! The only thing users have to do is be creative and use the elements that Weebly provides to build a website. Just chose a design template, drag and drop a paragraph with pictures and you are good to go. Additionally, you can embed video clips from Youtube, photo galleries, slideshows, and all kinds of files to make your website more creative and personal.
To be perfectly honest, I have always been interested in almost everything dealing with technology, the internet, Web 2.0, and so forth. Especially I have a preference for social platforms such as Facebook, Google +, and Twitter. Thus, I try to keep track of most technological developments and give those things a try if they are worth it.
With regard to my school time, I have to admit that times have changed: We neither had Smartboards nor did we make much use of the various possibilities the internet has to offer. Of course, the so-called "Web 2.0" with its new tools and potentials is a rather recent phenomenon, but the internet as such did already exist when I went to school and, even though we had a computer room, our teachers could not care less about it. However, schools and teachers need to face the status quo and adapt to the ongoing technological developments of our generation since technological gadgets such as smartphones and the internet have become a vital part of our society. That is why we as educators should be able to both deal with new media and evaluate its potential benefits for educational purposes.
The first tool I want to introduce is del.icio.us (or simply delicious). This website is a social bookmarking service for saving, organizing, sharing, and discovering bookmarked URLs. In other words, users can store bookmarks of websites they like in a stack and tag them with index terms describing the content and purpose of the respective page according to fitting categories. Furthermore, users can share their bookmarks on a personal profile page or work collaboratively by sharing and following their stacks with like-minded people.
I had heard of this tool before but never used it up to this point. Frankly, I was surprised how handy and versatile this web tool is and I can surely recommend using delicious! With regard to educational purposes, I would definitely suggest embedding it in class when it comes to web research or sharing websites with other students. Due to its easy usability - websites only need to dropped in the delicious bookmarklet - I will most likely use it in my future classes to provide my students with online sources and contribute additional material. For instance, delicious can contribute to online based projects and actively involve students when it comes to collecting sources from the web.
The same is true for Weebly - a platform that offers all the basics you need to create and edit a website (free of charge!). Weebly is pretty easy to handle with and makes publishing personal websites (blogs, portfolios, etc.) foolproof. It is really like shooting fish in a barrel! The only thing users have to do is be creative and use the elements that Weebly provides to build a website. Just chose a design template, drag and drop a paragraph with pictures and you are good to go. Additionally, you can embed video clips from Youtube, photo galleries, slideshows, and all kinds of files to make your website more creative and personal.
I can definitely see myself using this tool in the future for both personal purposes and school. Since it offers various possibilities to publish personal websites it can be used for a wide range of applications. One possibility, for instance, would be to work with blogs in class in order to publish student works or to create a website where both students and teachers can collect material from the world wide web. Of course, wordpress.com or tumblr.com serve the same or similar purposes, yet they are less versatile and offer not as many options to customize a page as Weebly does.
Tag Clouds by Tagxedo
Last but not least I would like to elaborate on word clouds. However, I will only talk about two examples for word cloud editors: Wordle and Tagxedo.
Both tools can be used to build a creative and random aggregation of words and texts ("tag clouds" or "word clouds") by providing their generators with any written input (e.g. articles, key words, websites, etc.). The user can chose from a several design templates and alter the clouds according to his or her personal taste and wishes. For instance, one can organize a word cloud hierarchically and customize it with different font styles, sizes and colors.
In terms of educational benefits, word clouds can contribute to more interesting approaches when dealing with texts for example. Breaking the structure and randomizing the order of words, word clouds pave the way for new dimensions when it comes to text analysis or introductions to novels. One idea would be to use them for mind maps, that is, the teacher collects key words and visualizes them according to their frequentness or relevance. Another suggestions would be to ask your students to guess the topic of a session with the help of word clouds.
In short, the Web 2.0 and new media in general offer a wide range of possibilities with regard to educational and private purposes. Since they are increasingly becoming an essential part of our society, teachers should be tech-savvy as well and act as role models in this regard. Neglecting the benefits that new media has to offer automatically implies obstructing the way for the future, i.e. new tools can enrich and improve education and support active learning when integrated and applied in a reasonable way.
Concerning this topic, I am really looking forward to discovering even more web tools and new media in this seminar and learning how to reasonably implement them in class. Furthermore, I am aware of the possibilites new media has to offer and I am willing to teach my future students how to use new media for their own purposes by sensitizing them for the importance, benefits, potentials but also the risks and downsides of such tools.
Both tools can be used to build a creative and random aggregation of words and texts ("tag clouds" or "word clouds") by providing their generators with any written input (e.g. articles, key words, websites, etc.). The user can chose from a several design templates and alter the clouds according to his or her personal taste and wishes. For instance, one can organize a word cloud hierarchically and customize it with different font styles, sizes and colors.
In terms of educational benefits, word clouds can contribute to more interesting approaches when dealing with texts for example. Breaking the structure and randomizing the order of words, word clouds pave the way for new dimensions when it comes to text analysis or introductions to novels. One idea would be to use them for mind maps, that is, the teacher collects key words and visualizes them according to their frequentness or relevance. Another suggestions would be to ask your students to guess the topic of a session with the help of word clouds.
In short, the Web 2.0 and new media in general offer a wide range of possibilities with regard to educational and private purposes. Since they are increasingly becoming an essential part of our society, teachers should be tech-savvy as well and act as role models in this regard. Neglecting the benefits that new media has to offer automatically implies obstructing the way for the future, i.e. new tools can enrich and improve education and support active learning when integrated and applied in a reasonable way.
Concerning this topic, I am really looking forward to discovering even more web tools and new media in this seminar and learning how to reasonably implement them in class. Furthermore, I am aware of the possibilites new media has to offer and I am willing to teach my future students how to use new media for their own purposes by sensitizing them for the importance, benefits, potentials but also the risks and downsides of such tools.
Further links and recommended websites
- My personal del.icio.us page: http://delicious.com/pmh_0201
- The 35 Best Web 2.0 Classroom Tools: http://edudemic.com/2010/07/the-35-best-web-2-0-classroom-tools-chosen-by-you/