Group+A+6-B-1

= Home > Group A Workspace > Learning Activity 6-B-1: Explore Read/Write Web Tools[|delicious] = 6-B-1 Karen Dolnick [] I chose to explore “Delicious” as recommended by Warlick, (2009), p. 92. This site permits visitors to set up accounts on various social networking sites such as “Twitter” and “Facebook”. It allows users to explore tags in a wide variety of interests, each with greater depth in articles and other sites. It is also possible to make contributions if so desired.

Delicious is mainly known for allowing users to set up bookmarks on several browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google, Opera and a couple of others. In order to do that, one must set up and account on Delicious which I did. It is delicious.com/dolnickkaren. It is a very user friendly site with directions for getting started with tags and bookmarks. Through that site, I explored various tags like “Twitter” and “Facebook” and just for fun signed up for and investigated people I know who might use that site (Twitter). I read a couple of education articles, one entitled, “Education: The latest bubble?” by Schumpeter, from The Economist. The article gave me some pause for thought and questions I might pose to the author, although I chose not to at this time. However, I do recommend the article to those of us who are teaching at university level and beyond.

I also checked out Google Apps K-12 Lesson Plans using Docs, Sites, and Calendar on “Delicious” and looked at a few of the lesson plans that would have interested me when I was teaching Social Studies and English in the brick and mortar classroom. I book marked the site for future exploration. I also read an interesting article entitled, How to Get a Real Education by Scott Adams that was printed in the Wall Street Journal. It also made a few points that interested me. I am thinking about writing an article about getting a degree online. After an hour of poking around and seeing some of the options offered by the site, I decided to come back and look at more selections another time. There is a lot to look at here, no matter what a person’s interests may be. It is a site I would recommend to other teachers.

Warlick, D. F. //Redefining Literacy 2.0//. Linworth books, Columbus, Ohio. 2009

=**ToonDoo** [] = =Marcy Dunn =

ToonDoo is “The World’s fastest way to create cartoons!” This comic creating resource is used as a digital tool to creatively express yourself. This user friendly service makes it easy to create, publish, and share a comic strip, book, character, and much more. You can even upload your own pictures. There is so much you can do using this site, you will have to get on an check it out! You can sign up for free so that you can save your projects and share with others.

ToonDoo can be used for multiple reasons across various grade levels. It is a way to interpret text into a visual representation. Even though it is a comic strip, it doesn’t have to be used for only humorous pieces of work. It can be used to show sequencing of a story or even a science concept. Teachers can create stories or comic strips to teach a new skill or write their own stories to share with the class. It can bring cross curricular integration into subjects. For example, 3rd grade students could create a math comic strip using 3 dimensional objects as their characters and incorporate the shapes' properties into the writing.

To get started, you simply click the “sign up for FREE” tab on the top right-hand corner of the website. You can then start a free account or paid account using ToonDooSpaces. You will need a username, password and email address to create a free account.

6-B-1 Peter:

I have chosen to write about Google Reader. Google Reader is a free service which organizes your favorite internet blogs or news articles into one place. To use Google Reader, you need a Google account, which is also free.

When you access Google Reader at first, there will not be anything to “read” yet. This is the step where you have to do some work. You need to go and find the internet addresses that contain news or blog articles that you read on a regular basis.

To add a new blog or news feed, simply click on the add button, and paste in the address of where you find the blog or feed. For example, if you are an NHL fan and read Puck Update (a blog about hockey), you would add the feed “[].” Now, every time you log into your Google Reader, it will automatically display the newest posts or articles from Puck Update.

If you add a few more items to your list, you can check all of these sites for new news without even having to go to their website. You will have a list of new news articles right there in front of you.

For those of you with smart phones, you can add your Google Reader account to many RSS readers, which will access your Google Reader account and update automatically. For example, if you check Google Reader from your home computer, and later use your RSS reader on your smart phone, you won’t be reading the same articles twice; it will automatically update to show which articles are new and which have already been read.

A service like this can be of great use to an educator. An educator could create a list of educational news blogs and keep checking in for new ideas for their teaching methods. Also, if a teacher is truly teaching 21st century skills and has their students keeping educational blogs, this is a great place to group them and have access to all of your students’ blogs in one place. A high school teacher can specialize in the news they sign up for (specific to curriculum). For example, a science teacher can keep up with scientific blogs and share them with the class, etc.

It is a great tool that I use when reading about geeky things like video games or iphone apps, etc.

As you can see, the subscriptions are neatly organized on the left side, and the blog

Seth 6-B-2 The website that I have chossen to review is Tumblr. This is much like many of the micro-blogging platforms out there for example Posterous or Twitter. This particular one allows the user to post texts, pictures, video, audio, chat, and make links. Howver, It can only be used with twitter. It would be useful as a blogging platform in class with students because you have the ability to use text, pictures, video, audio, chat and add links. It appears to have everything for students. It would be an interactive type of blogg for students of many learning styles. It would be a great way to do some weekely online journaling or for formative assessments. Students could communicate in real time with other students.