Kitchin,+Angela+Love+-+Cool+Tools+Review

I attended the Cool Tools session for ELA teachers with Dr. Beach. The lesson that he showed us was so neat and I am planning to mirror his lesson in my own classroom. His lesson included two very cool Web 2.0 tools: Ning [] and Diigo [|http://www.diigo.com]. Using Ning, we were able to have a discussion arguing our stance about an important issue – in this case, unhealthy food being sold in grocery stores. There were two parts to Ning. One part was a discussion forum in which people could post their arguments and reply to one anothers’ posts. The other section was a live chat room that allowed people to expresses their opinions in conversation form. Then, he explained that our students could use Diigo to research the topic and highlight information they want to share about their topic. Diigo would be a really cool way to have the students research collaboratively on their topic/position. What I liked best about Ning was that the students could create a fake persona and fake name. This would give them the courage to speak freely and not worry about hurting their best friends’ feelings. It would be fun for the students to create their persona and profile and would help them get in character and buy in to the activity. In my class, I would first brainstorm topics with the students. This way they could pick a topic that is important to them. Then, as a class we would decide on the final topic. Then, the students would randomly be assigned to take a pro stance or a con stance. Finally, they would create their Ning persona name and profile. Over the next few days my students would work together (pros with pros and cons with cons) to research the topic. The would use Diigo to share the information they find, utilizing the highlighting and sticky note tools. After a few days of research, the students would log into Ning and write a forum post explaining their position. They would need to include facts and sources they found in their research in order to support their opinion. They would also be required to respond to a number of posts from their peers. (Note: At this point I would not allow the students to use the chat feature as I would really want them to focus on the more formal aspect of the assignment.) Once all students had posted to the forum, I would open up permission to use the chat feature and monitor them as they continue using their adopted personas to discuss the issue. At the end of the class, I would have the students write a reflection about the chat experience. To take the assignment one step further, I would want to utilize one more cool Web 2.0 tool I have learned about this week, Change.org []. After completing the Ning and Diigo aspects of this project, my students should be well-informed about their issue. So, I would have them browse change.org and pick three topics/letters that they feel are important and reflect on why the issues are important, why they agree with the author, and what was good/bad about the letters they read. Finally, they would write their own petition based on their topic. For this, I would have them work in teams and would allow them to choose a pro or con stance. We would then post the letters to the website and I would have the students track the number of signatures they were receiving on a chart in class. We could reflect on why some petitions were getting more or less signatures as we track the results.