The Web Is A Beautiful Place

Exploring The Unknown: Web2.0

Look how far we have come..

It is truly amazing to think that not even six years ago, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook were not apart of our daily lives. In fact, they weren't apart of anyones lives at all.. they weren't even created yet! As the video states, "We are living in exponential times".. aint' that the truth! Our technological world is growing at a rapid rate, more now than ever! As things in the technological world grow, we grow. Especially in the field of exceptional education, students are gaining more and more support, accessibility, and independence through the use of our daily Web and all it has to offer. According to Larry Ferlazzo's "Best Web 2.0 Applications for Education-2010", the use of Sitehoover is helping make things more organized and direct for students. For some, the use of this site could determine whether or not an assignment gets complete. It can foresee whether or not a student has enough given information to perform certain tasks to the extent needed. For others, it can provide a useful organizing tool, where students are free to direct their information and websites into distinct folders that they create. Sitehoover allows you to create a personal homepage for a topic of your choice, and shows thumbnail images of the selected websites you have chosen. This application is very useful to students in doing research and gaining data from different websites across the Web, for it allows students to put all of their accessed websites onto one homepage, instead of having a different tab open for each website.

This application stood out to me directly, because as I was reading the description of how the tool works, I noticed that I have 7 tabs open on my one browser, with three "Stickies" with different to-do lists on them, my agenda sitting next to my bed with assignments written down, and a hand written to-do list taped to my door. I really liked this application for the main reason that it allows for students to feel as though they have a strong sense of organization and overall control. Having control over an assignment is the easiest way to successfully complete the task with confidence that you put your best work in. By using a tool like Sitehoover, you are given that power and control over the assignment, by organizing things the way that they make sense to you. The sense of individuality will come in handy when educating students with disabilities, in that it allows them to have an individual look at their own work. In accordance to the LRE (Least Restrictive Environment , the process of a students learning is as different as our fingerprints. By using a tool such as Sitehoover, students are able to create a different webpage as different as they are, and use it to their own advantage. Whether you are educating students with or without disabilities, each child learns differently. By giving them the freedom to organize their assignments or research through Sitehoover, they are free to access and organize their information in a way that makes sense to them. 

For my example, I chose to research and gain data on Labrador Retrievers. 

http://www.sitehoover.com/labrador-retrievers/

...Where will we go from here?

The Internet: Native vs. Immigrant

What Is The Internet
"What Is The Internet"... some people may laugh at this question. Although there are probably a great deal of ways to describe what the Internet is, the most basic way to explain it would be simply: "Yet another device used and abused for information, communication, nonsense, and learning." As humans in this day and age, we rely on the Internet.. for some, on a daily basis. For others, not as much. It is becoming more and more of a natural custom in our growing society to use the Internet as a means for just about anything. Just about anything on this planet can be found somehow somewhere on the Internet. In many ways, it connects us. It has come from simple emailing, to Skype (a way to have a video-chat conversation with someone somewhere else in present time). 

In the classroom, students have evolved greatly through the use of computer and the Internet. Growing up as a child, I remember the now "old school" computers, that at the time were the new hit. From then till now, we have enhanced the technological system of the Internet into an amazing device. Laptops, webcams, search engines, the works. Through these new advances, teachers are able to communicate and share ideas across the world. For many teachers, their lessons and ideas are a collaboration of efforts from other educators that could be thousands of miles away. 

As a future educator, I'm well aware that there are going to be changes in our technological systems.. just as there were in my childhood. I'm excited to enhance learning and even further educate students beyond their expectation through the use of these new devises. I think that our society today is driven by modernization and advancement, and I'm excited to see where these next years take us.



Web 2.0 
The article by Dina Rosen and Charles Nelson "Web 2.0: A New Generation of Learners and Education" is an informative article that describes how the Internet has evolved. Before, it used to be a "read only" type of thing, otherwise known as Web 1.0. Now it has transformed into something where one can now publish as well, Web 2.0. Scary, right? Now anyones voice can be heard through the Internet, not just those with special permission. 

This ties into the idea of the Universal Design for Learning in a way that it opens doors for students. With anyone now being capable of publishing ideas on the Internet, students have a widened variety of ideas and demonstrations that can help them learn. By expanding these ideas in such a vast way, more students are likely to find educational learning techniques that work for them, seeing as that the UDL is based on the concept that not every child learns the same. 

This new and improved way of looking at the Internet can also benefit teachers. As many theorists have said, education is a collaborated effort. By using Web 2.0, teachers are able to collaborate not only with the teachers they work with, but with teachers all around the world. I know personally, I've used the web numerous times to help guide me with lesson planning and ideas for creative learning styles for individual students. The web is our friend. 

"As a social revolution more than as a technical revolution, Web 2.0

tools’ greatest power is that it can change the nature of student learning"

(Rosen & Nelson)