Dorothy Minor is our latest guest blogger on The Eighth Floor. She has been working with Web 2.0 tools for quite some time and has real experience at practical application.
Dorothy Minor
Associate Professor, English
Associate Professor, English
Tulsa Community College
After using
a variety of Web 2.0 tools over the last few semesters, I have developed some
favorites. The Web 2.0 tools I currently like the best are those with the
following qualities: free, easy to use, student/teacher-friendly, useful in
learning/teaching. I have found a wide variety and number of Web 2.0 tools
which fit the criteria listed above. However, I would like to focus on three
that fit the criteria and add a bonus item: fun to use: Jogtheweb, www.jogtheweb.com; Bighughelabs, www.bighugelabs.com; and Themeefy, www.themeefy.com.
After
creating a free account at jogtheweb, students and teachers can collect Web
sites on a particular topic, add comments, and create a title page complete
with questions or directions for using the collected sites. This semester, I
required my Comp I students to create their own Jogtheweb accounts and collect
sources for their research papers in the jog. They then posted their jog links
in a wiki I created for that purpose in Blackboard. I had access to the sites
the students were using through the links. I also created a jog which I used
with students to help them evaluate Web sites. I chose sites that can fool the
casual observer into thinking the sites are legitimate when they are not.
Interspersed with the bogus sites, I included reliable sites. Students had to
investigate all the sites and write a short paper explaining which sites were
legitimate and which were bogus along with their reasons for identifying the
sites as legitimate or bogus. For a
class reading Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” I assembled sites on
O’Brien, the Vietnam War, Native American Vietnam veterans’ accounts of their
experience in the war, and other accounts of the Vietnam War. On the title
page, I included specific questions to guide the students through the sites
prior to our classroom discussions of the story. Jogtheweb offers a variety of
ways to engage students with material.
Bighugelabs
is fun to use because we can use the site to create a poster, magazine cover,
movie poster, jigsaw puzzle, and trading cards. After my students read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, they made
magazine covers to advertise the story. While the students had fun in
developing their magazine covers, they also had to think about the story they
had read and incorporate certain elements which I required. The assignment
allowed the students to be inventive and resourceful. They showed their
finished products to the rest of the class. One student put the price of his
magazine as “an arm and a leg.” I thought that was clever in view of the story
we had read: Frankenstien.
Bighugelabs provides an opportunity for teachers and students to be creative
and use the site to showcase ideas they have or to reflect upon readings. Cindy
Brock, technology coordinator at Presbyterian Day School, Memphis, TN, offers
more ideas for using Bighugelabs on her blog: http://itscindybrock.blogspot.com/2011/03/big-huge-labs.html .
The third
Web 2.0 tool to investigate is Themeefy. With a free account, we can produce an
online magazine consisting of Web sites, videos, images, and our own text. The uses for this tool are emerging rapidly.
This semester, I developed an assignment for my Honors Comp I students to
curate a magazine on topics they had been studying about Japan, our focus in
the honors class. They started by
brainstorming on the subjects they wished to include. The assignment had
specific requirements such as the number of Web sites, videos, and topics to
include. Students were then free to add other material as they saw fit; they
included additional videos or images to illustrate the points they wished to
make. Then they presented their findings
to the rest of the class. As with
JogtheWeb, we can collect Web sites for students to evaluate, mixing in
legitimate sites with bogus ones. We can also assemble sites on a particular
subject so that students have the material in one place for further study. We can take screen shots of the computer and
documents and load them into a Themeefy magazine. For an online class, the
possibilities are intriguing for including our syllabus, sample papers, videos
of important content, and other materials. Themeefy offers a variety of uses
for both students and teachers.
Jogtheweb,
Bighughelabs, and Themeefy open up new worlds for students and teachers alike.
They give us the opportunity to be creative while we use technology to enhance
our learning and teaching. If you have not seen these tools, give them a test
drive. We can have fun sharing ideas on how to incorporate these Web 2.0 tools
into our courses. Enjoy the ride!
Dorothy
Minor
If you are interested in guest blogging for The Eighth Floor, let's talk!
lee.anne.morris@tulsacc.edu - Thanks, Lee Anne
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