Web 2.0 Tools

I feel like singing a "congratulations" song to myself right now. If you would have asked me a few weeks ago (when I was completely lost) I would have said that I didn't know any Web 2.0 tools and had never used one.
Well I do, and I have! Not only do I use some of these tools on a regular basis (I ALWAYS e-mail out an Evite invitation to every play!) but I am very familiar and comfortable with them.
Based on what I have learned in this class I will also be able to add to my knowledge base and (hopefully) insipre my students to learn about and use these tools as well.

My own wiki

I am really excited about having created my own wiki to use in my classroom. This will give my students access to class documents, notes, a class calendar, and important information that I can update easily.
I can also use the wiki to keep information posted on my upcoming shows as well as recent show pictures.
I learned how to create new pages on my wiki, how to add links, and how to post pictures and clip art.

Google Earth

I have just discovered the most useful of the online tools that we have learned about in this course. Google Earth is not only very fun to play with, it can be used as a great classroom tool as well.

I enjoyed seeing in 3D all of the theatres that I have been teaching about. It is almost like being able to go on a trip to these locations. The adding of information was a great way to educate while having fun. I would like to have added some questions for students to answer at each of these sites. Google Earth would make a great addition to our theatre history projects and would allow students a sense of different countries.

Online Photo Album

As a scrapbooker, I can see the wisdom of wanting to keep your photos forever and worrying that computer malfunctions might send them int the abyss. I only downloaded a few pictures to Flickr so far, but I loved how quick and easy it was. I could also use Picnik to modify those pictures right on the Flickr site, which made the process even easier to use (and made my pictures look better quickly).
I also love the idea that my friends can quickly and easily see new pictures from me. It saves lots of time trying to email pictures that may be too large. My friend Terri is a mural artist and I could definately see her posting pictures of her work for people to search for. That way she would be able to use them as her own website without the hassle of creating one from scratch.
We just did a community project with our kiddos where they had to get pictures of certain people and places from around the community. That would have been a great oppertunity to work with Flickr.

RSS Feeds

So I finally got so lost with this class that I had to beg for help.
Thank god that I happen to be married to my very own computer guru. He helped me figure out how to use RSS feeds to look at news sites and blogs (though he made me include his blog as an example). I think I understand the purpose of using an RSS feed to keep information current, but it will be awhile longer before I'm comfortable using them often I think.
An update, since my blog was not accepted...
I have noticed that most of the websites I search on a daily basis have options for RSS feeds. The idea is to update followers to new content on a page. For example, if I had my students subscribe to my blog (and if I had something useful to say here) a RSS feed would update them when I had created a new posting that they should read or respond to.

Podcasting

I have used different forms of pod casting in the past, but I have never subscribed to a podcast. As I explored the different pod casting websites, I was amazed at how many interesting pod casts there were. There was information on all different kinds of theatre, music, pretty much anything you could want to know more about. I am a little daunted about creating my own podcast (Will it be interesting? Do I have anything important to say? Does anyone want to listen?) but I am also excited about the chance to "put myself out there" and see what I can do.

Apparently I need to add some more information to my blog about podcasting, so here goes...
I recreated my voicethread adding more pictures, more comments, more voice comments, a new video, a word document, and some doodling. Of all of this I enjoyed the doodling the most even though it seems like the most useless feature to me. (I can just see my students going overboard with it.) I do like the fact that using voicethread can allow several users to watch and comment on a presentation at once. I can see it bein useful for asking and answering questions.

Using Social Bookmarking

I am a new (and very enthusiastic) convert to social bookmarking. At first the concept seems simple: Keep your bookmarks online so that you can access them from any computer just by logging in. Then I really started to see the beauty of this system: Social bookmarks can be shared with others. I can see other websites that teachers like and they can see what I like. It's an easy way to filter through all of the information on the Internet and just weed out the really good sites. Now people have another easy and fast way to communicate across continents.