Use of NetVibes by Students

Buffy Hamilton, a high school librarian in Georgia, has been co-teaching a class about using web2.0 tools with high school students. They have been working on a research project on veterans issues. You can follow her progress in the Media21 class through her blog (theunquietlibrarian) and on a recent post at ALA Learning. One of the things she has students doing is creating their own personal NetVibes pages as personal learning environments. A recent post on her blog provides examples of how students are using NetVibes through videos they have created.

In Their Own Words: Students Provide a Video Tour of Their Netvibes Learning Portals

WEMTA Wiki

The Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association recently held their annual conference in the Wisconsin Dells. There were a range of presentations dealing with libraries and technologies in K-12 education. The conference wiki now includes handouts from a number of the presentations.

Benefits of Blogs in Education

While blogging is a relatively new technology, there is already research that looks at benefits of using the tool in education. Here's just one example of some potential benefits. Check in ERIC or Academic Search in Badgerlink for many more.

Duffy, Peter and Bruns, Axel (2006) The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, pages pp. 31-38

More Education Blogs

Although this list is over a year and a half old at this point, it may still have some blogs of interest to you as a teacher.

50 Must-Read Up and Coming Blogs by Teachers

Adding Widgets to Your Blog

Once you get comfortable creating regular blog posts, you may want to add some widgets to your blog just the way you could add a search box along the side using the settings. Top 10 Widgets for Your Class Blog suggested widgets such as a calendar, a polling tool, a Voki, and ways to track traffic on your blog.

Real Uses of Real Web2.0 Tools

CESA 5 has had EETT grants for the past several years. Over the past two years they have run professional development opportunities on Digital Tools and have shared many of the teachers' lesson plans on their website as well as a range of resources used in their project in year 2 and year 3.

Web 2.0 Technologies that Facilitate Collaboration

Bud Talbot, a science teacher, talks about ways he uses web 2.0 technologies to extend the collaboration going on in his science classroom, e.g., group problem solving, group lab activities, pair-share, peer tutoring, jigsaw, and student teams/games. He uses a variety of technologies for:

• extension of in-class group time
• online group workspaces
• sharing updates
• sharing work with an outside audience
• documentation