I chose to look into NETS-T 3 to “collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation”. I chose to focus on this because my assessment indicated I needed improvement in this area. Also, I felt that I needed a better understanding on how to incorporate Web 2.0 to young students and maybe help me in my future teachings. Through my reading, “The Top Ten Web Tools for Young Learners”, provided me insights on great “go-to” technology tools. The following technology tools illustrated many ways on how to enhance the knowledge of students and mine, as a future educator.
The website provided really cool technology teaching tools:
10. Kerpoof: Illustrates creative tools for animation, drawing, and move creation. It’s also great for reading, letters, and spelling. The drag-and-drop feature on it is great for young students.
9. Voki: A text to speech generator. This can be great for students, peers, parents and community members collaborate. This is also a great tech tool because it is a tool to help kids who do not know how to read.
8. Create-A-Graph: Although Lovely does not illustrate this as any Web. 2.0 tools, she added this on the list because it helps kids create graphs and learn to read data. This is great because it teaches kids how to transfer current knowledge and transfer it through technology.
7. Yack Pack: voice communication tool. This can be great for a class collaboration or parent and teacher communication.
6. Animoto: A cool tool that presents an automated presentation using images to communicate a message.
5. Skype: This tool is great because it’s FREE! I don’t agree with the “virtual field trips” but Skype is another great tool for a collaborative form of communication and participation.
4. Glogster: Personal web page. This is a great tool to educate young students how to “embed” videos, pictures, text, and links into their personal web page as a class project.
3. Voicethread: An audiovisual tool that enables students to use their ability to upload images or video files.
2. Blogs: A tool that obviously needs an administrator to look over the blog post. But, overall it’s a great tool to get to know your students and give students the power to freely write on their own. Plus, this can be monitored as a “private” or “public” view for the class.
1. Wikis: This tool is more versatile than blogs. Students can develop slide presentations on a giant screen, for example. It is a great tool for stimulating collaboration among students, peers, teachers and parents.
"Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners" taught me a lot about how Web 2.0 can be taught and used by young learners. I have been very confused in how to assimilate Web 2.0 in a classroom. However, after reading this website, I felt more comfortable about how to approach my future teaching with the tools offered by this article. Not only have I realized the variety of technology tools available to teach younger learners, but I have also realized the important understanding of how to use these tools and see how other educators use it in their teachings.
