Web+2.0

**1.)** **MuseumBox is a website which allows users to create a virtual museum box filled with artifacts and ‘objects’ placed on each side of an informative cube. These virtual museum boxes can vary in size and number of cubes included, and can be used to describe an important person, event, or historical period. The box can also be used for debating purposes through providing evidence to support an argument. A wide variety of content can be placed on each of the cube’s six sides including images, text, web-links, Word and PDF documents, video and audio files, and even PowerPoint presentations! The site even offers a teachers’ resource page with ideas about how MuseumBox can be used to support curriculum. MuseumBox could be incorporated into historical or social studies units in which students would include items from the particular historical period or part of world being studied. For example, for a unit on Westward Expansion, students could include and explain Native American and pioneer articles of clothing and tools, historical maps, timelines, and important events or people. If Japan was being studied in social studies, students could design cubes focusing on Japanese culture and traditions, history, and geography, just to name a few. Literature, or even science units could also be integrated into a MuseumBox. Students could design cubes to illustrate a particular character or important event in a story or create reports explaining a science topic (such as the processes of photosynthesis, mitosis, or a particular planet in the solar system) through visuals (images, video, and charts) as well as text. **
 * Web 2.0 **  **Web 2.0 offers a wealth of extremely useful resources for teachers to incorporate into various aspects of their classrooms. The rich span of these interactive online resources covers everything from image, video, and audio tools to presentation, research, mapping, writing, organizational tools, and more! Five excellent tools Web 2.0 has to offer, sure to enhance both teaching and learning, include MuseumBox, Tikatok, Dipity, MapVivo, and BlockPosters. **

**2.)** **Tikatok can be a wonderful tool for teachers, students, and parents alike as it excites and motivates students about writing books they can share with others. It is an online platform through which children can create and publish their very own books. Tikatok creates books through a user friendly online story editor. Children can either write their own story or can get started by using a Tikatok ‘Story Starters’ topic (which include such topics as robots, aliens, space, animals, bugs, cars, trains, planes, and dinosaurs) as a writing prompt. They can then illustrate their story by uploading their own drawings or photos. The book can then be published in a professional hardcover or softcover version or downloaded as an ebook for as low as $2.99! Tikatok ebooks can even be viewed online, embedded, or shared via email. After publishing their books, children can then share their stories with fellow classmates and parents. Tikatok can be incorporated into writer’s workshop in any elementary school classroom, in grades ranging from kindergarten to fifth grade as students write and illustrate their very own stories. These stories can be fictional, in which children write and draw accompanying pictures for an original narrative story from their own imaginations or their own versions of a popular fairy tale, or they can be autobiographical. Children could write a story about a special personal memory or event in their lives or even their own autobiography, including actual photos of their real life experiences. The published book can then be used to practice oral reading skills when being presented and shared with the class by its author. **


 * 3.) Dipity allows users to create interactive digital multimedia timelines, an especially helpful tool for any history or social studies class! Even such large news sources as Fox News, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the Guardian in the UK use Dipity on their websites. The timeline is interactive as users can scroll through the timeline to a particular date or time by hour, day, week, month, or year and can then click on the entries along the timeline to see images and videos and to read text and accompanying links regarding the particular date in time. They can even leave their own comments. Users can create and share their own timelines incorporating text, images, video, audio, web links (especially to online news articles and such), and location and timestamps, or they can collaborate together on a timeline. This tool can be used in the classroom by either the teacher, in order to enhance teaching and presentational skills, or by the students as part of a group project. Teachers can create interactive timelines on the particular era or important event(s) in history or social studies that the class is studying (such as the Civil War or the ratification of Constitution), making the subject matter more interesting through adding supplemental images, videos, and explanations to bring the material to life. Students could also create their own timelines about an important time period, event, or person in history (for example, a timeline on the life of Thomas Edison) in groups and then present their timeline to the rest of the class. **


 * 4.) MapVivo is a particularly useful Web 2.0 tool for geography, social studies, history, or even autobiographical writing lessons. The website allows users to create and share travel maps. Those viewing these travel maps of any particular region in the world are shown the route of the person who created the map and can click on important stops to read text descriptions and view photos or videos of the location. Teachers can use MapVivo to document actual or imagined trips to countries or regions the class is studying in either a geography, history, or social studies unit. They can mark important stops and add photos, videos, and text for students to explore and get an idea of the area and its significance. For example, for a unit on North America, teachers could create an imaginary travel route for students to follow as they learn about the three different countries on the continent through clicking through important landmarks in Canada, the United States, and Mexico and viewing related photos, videos, and descriptions of these important places. Students could even leave comments and questions at destinations. Also, teachers could recreate maps of important travel routes in history, such as routes for the Lewis and Clark Expedition of the Underground Railroad. Older students could create their own travel maps as part of a group project to report on a particular country or region. For example, a class might be studying Europe and the continent could be broken into separate countries for groups to present a report on. MapVivo could even be incorporated into autobiographical writing with students documenting a memorable trip or vacation. **


 * 5.) BlockPoster is also a highly useful tool and can be used for any subject area in any classroom. The website allows users to upload any image from a computer and to then blow up the image in order to make a large poster out of it. This is done through first uploading the image and then deciding how large (how many sheets of paper wide and long) you want the image to be once you have printed and assembled it. Once you’ve decided and “sliced” your image, you can download the new PDF file which contains all of the pages of your enlarged image, which you can then print out and put together. The result will be your image enlarged into a large pixel wall-sized poster. This tool is useful for teachers because they can create their own posters on any topic and in any subject area for free. Teachers can create motivational posters, posters of classroom rules, informational posters on a particular topic, or simply posters of pictures relating to what the class is studying. Students themselves could even scan in and create their own informational posters on a certain topic to present to the class as part of a unit. **


 * __*Reflection*:__ This assignment was probably one of the most useful I have done all semester! I have bookmarked many of websites that I discovered as a result of the assignment, as I know they are something I will refer to in the future, when it comes to lesson planning and incorporating technology into my classroom. It was hard to pick only 5 to concentrate on! :) As a person who is a huge fan and user of the world wide web, I consider the internet to be an incredible resource.However, finding extremely useful websites can be hard to do as there is a lot out there for one to sift through. The website provided (Cool Tools for Schools) was a great website to exemplify that Web 2.0 is rich with tools that can be used in the classroom by both teachers and students. These tools are educational resources that can enhance both teaching and learning and offer a multitude of learning experiences that would not have been possible ten years ago. There are tools for presentations, research, slideshows, video and audio tools, mapping, graphing, quizzing and poll tools, and even organization, all of which are extremely useful and I know will be extremely beneficial in my future classroom. There are literally hundreds of ways these tools can be helpful and incorporated into lessons! We as future educators are truly fortunate to live in a time where so many useful and interactive resources are free for anyone to use and literally at our fingertips. In this assignment, I only covered a small handful of resources that Web 2.0 has to offer, but there are millions more awaiting to be discovered. **
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