Glogs

I am excited to learn how people are using/plan to use glogs in their classrooms. I tried using glogs this year as an outside required reading assignment. The students enjoyed creating these, but once again passwords were a bit confusing for them. I let my students play with glogs because they had never used them before. I would like to do this again now that they are familiar with glogs.

Other Tools Assignment

I like this wiki because of the way it is organized. It will be a great place to go to remind myself of tools to use in the classroom. I like Audacity because I have used it with my students, and it was very successful. It was easy for them to understand, and it added to the assignment. It wasn't technology for technology's sake. Animoto is another one of my favorites. I haven't used it in the classroom yet, but I created my digital story using Animoto. Again, it is simple, but the result is an impressive video. I found a new tool on this wikispace as well. It's called confusing words, and it is a "collection of 3210 words that are troublesome to readers and writers. Words are grouped according to the way they are most often confused or misused." I do teach "words often confused" to my students, but this seems like an excellent resource for them. I try to stress that spell-check will not catch these types of mistakes, and this resource will help my students to understand this concept.

Diigo Assignment

http://www.diigo.com/09vv0

The concept of Diigo is great, especially because students often collaborate on research assignments. However, I still think it is a little confusing. I was able to highlight, share, and annotate websites; but it took some time to figure out how to do this. I think if I supervised my students while they created their groups and practiced sharing research, then they could add websites and notes on their own. I would prefer paper and a highlighter for my own research, but I think they would like Diigo better.

Diigo Assignment

Jennifer taught my students how to use Diigo this year. They think it is a great tool, but I didn't notice many of them using it for their projects. I like the concept a lot, but I am still struggling with it a bit. For example, I just tried to join the group for this class, but I am not able to share my bookmarks with the group. It seems like Diigo will be like most new things with technology: confusing at first, but it will eventually make things much easier. I remember when I thought email was confusing! So, I will continue to work on sharing my bookmarks with the group this week. I will reflect on the process after I am able to do this.