Tetreault,+Ashlee+-+Cool+Tools+Review

//The Cool Tools Carousel allowed the group to see many different Web 2.0 tools in action and in a small group setting. The session allowed us to actually see the tools and how they are used. I saw iRubic, Similar Sites, Information Fluency Wizard. I have heard of iRubric before but have never used it in my class. I have used RubiStar so I want like to try iRubric this coming school year. The tool I am most excited about trying is Similar Sites. Multiple times while teaching I will pull up a website and wish that I had something similar or another resource for that topic that was interactive. This site allows me to do that in a quick and easy way that also saves time. The Information Fluency Wizards I have never heard of but can be used when students are doing research or looking for bias in an article.//

//The second part of the Cool Tools Carousel for my group reviewed: Google Forms, Tricider, Symbaloo, LiveBinder, and Engage Community. I have successfully used Google Forms in my classroom and feel comfortable with that tool. I have heard of and seem Symbaloo and LiveBinder demonstrated but have yet to incorporate them into my classroom or professional environment. I found Tricider to be a really interesting way to get immediate feedback and allow students to post ideas and thoughts. This would be a great way to have students reflect on a particular lesson or method of instruction. Engage Community looks to be something that may be extremely beneficial for me in my professional environment and worth researching more.//

The final tour on the Cool Tools Carousel highlighted: GoogleDocs. Blabberize, Sock Puppets, ToonDoo, Edmodo, Twitter, Prezi, Glogster, and SlideRocket. I had to opportunity to go to the ISTE 2012 Conference this year and saw all of these Web 2.0 tools except for SlideRocket. I think that would be a really cool option for my students when they have to create presentations and they all create a Prezi. I like variety and giving the students this option gives them a choice as to what they think is the best presentation software for their project.

Tuesday afternoon I had the option to attend an additional Cool Tools session and chose to go to Problem Based Learning. This session mentioned a few tools that can be used and that I am familiar with. The tools highlighted were Collaborize Classroom, WikiSpaces, and Tricider. The best part of the presentation for me was the explanation on the Essential Question and how to develop an Essential Question. The help in developing that and knowing the difference between an Essential Question and a Content Question was helpful.

The science specific Cool Tools session was extremely helpful and well demonstrated. We were able to use an online simulation and WikiSpaces to design an experiment. The instructor demonstrated a PBI by having us work through it. The instructor also included a ton of Web 2.0 tools to look through and encouraged us to add any tools to the list that we find helpful and that may be able to help other teachers.

Social media can be a powerful tool in the classroom and I think teachers need to learn to use it in a meaningful educational way. Twitter is a powerful social media tool that is free and accessible on computers as well as mobile devices. While teaching a new concept you can supplement your lessons using Twitter after school to have the students respond to posts and create ideas or thoughts about the material from that day. An idea might be to teach about organic compounds in class one day. You explain to the students how to use chemicals to test for each of these compounds. That night you may ask the students to design an experiment for homework and then send out a Tweet to your students to explain the structural difference in the organic compounds to 3 different people and have them sign their notebook to prove that they explained it. The next day you may perform an experiment on organic compounds and have the students Tweet questions they have about the lab from that day and encourage the students to answer each other. The next night you might ask the students to Tweet a quiz question and provide the answer, creating a database of questions for the students to review. The teacher can set up a hashtag for the class to keep it all organized and easy for the students to reference.