Helpful Web 2.0 tools that can make learning both fun and easy for all students:

When reviewing some of the Web 2.0 tools listed on Larry Ferlazzo's blog, I came to the conclusion that though many of them were fantastic and I have bookmarked them to use in the future - Tripline was my favorite. It is a map-making site that allows you to create a journey across the map using photos and music. I find this to be an excellent tool because it can be used in such a wide variety of ways! It of course can be used in geography, but also in history and English class as well. The students can use this to create the historical path of  Paul Revere, or Lewis and Clark, or perhaps something else entirely. It could also be used in English to depict the journey of a character in a book the students are reading. With the tool to upload photos or music, the students could customize each stop on the trail to upload historical photos or folk songs or even photos from the novel, depending on which subject they are working for. This could even be used if the student went on a trip and wanted to share it with their classmates, allowing them to upload photos from their trip with each pinpointed spot on the map.

I think this site is a fantastic site from the standpoint of an educator - especially one in the Special Education field. This site utilizes visual learning, something that many students with disabilities need or rely on. But it also has the audio factor for students who rely on learning by hearing - both amazing changes from the usual text learning. It could not only assist students who need to learn in different, less traditional ways, but it can also make the lesson more fun and engaging - something all students can benefit from.

Playing around on the site myself, I had a lot of fun with it. It's very user friendly and pretty easy to understand right off the bat. The tools are clearly labeled and the directions are clear and concise. This would be incredibly easy for a student to use (especially a student of the Web 2.0 era) even without instruction or help from a teacher. To share an example of my own, I made a basic, quick map of a trip from Buffalo to Disney World - a trip I have taken many a time! You can find that map here. The fact I made this map in just a few minutes shows how easy this tool is and how it could be utilized in our classrooms today (especially when many of us feel rushed to get through material!)

Web 2.0 and What it Means for Educators

After reading the article Web 2.0 A New Generation of Learners and Education by Dina Rosen and Charles Nelson, my opinion that integrating technology and the internet into my teaching is once again solidified. Before we get into what Web 2.0 means for our future students, we should really define what Web 2.0 is exactly. 

Web 1.0 is the idea that the internet is a system used to provide information, that the audience is on a readers-only basis. But Web 2.0 is the world we live in today, an internet where all people can not only read information, but write and post information as well. This website we are using now is an example of that. In Web 1.0, back several years ago, only a few individuals knew how to use HTML or create webpages for their product or business. But today, we live in a society where high school freshman have already mastered the use of HTML during their free time so they they could customize their Tumblr. Adolescents and teenagers, most young adults too, are the digital natives we've discussed. They have grown up with the internet and all these advanced technologies and they know them like the back of their hand. But what does this mean for the educators who have to teach these digital natives?

As discussed, educators need to keep up to date with new technologies and the use of the internet in order to properly. And speaking as a special education major, technology can play an even bigger part in our students' needs. Assistive and educational technologies are tools students use to meet their needs in order to fully grasp the concepts we are trying to teach them. In regards to the internet and Web 2.0, using the internet (blogs, wikis, etc.) to help enhance our students' participation and collaboration is an amazing and up-to-date way to keep our students involved and keep ourselves timely and relevant in our teaching methods. As stated in the article, 

"Education 2.0 emphasizes social constructivist pedagogy. Although constructivism has been popular in education for some time, the term Education 2.0 signals the addition of a new dimension, a 21st century digital dimension rooted in collaborative technologies that enable groups to move past their usual ways of working together and, as a result, to (a) build a collective wisdom that transcends that of the individual, in which the wisdom of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and (b) transform the constructivist classroom into an Education 2.0 classroom (i.e., into an interactive, participatory, adapting, living organism of learning and generating content)."

I've bolded the parts I particularly want to emphasize. Allowing our students to collaborate in such a way causes a community of learning, a "living organism of learning", and in a special education classroom or an inclusive classroom, this is an great tool to utilize. Particularly, an inclusive setting where we have both exceptional and general education students, having the students come together on an even playing field and collaborate as a class is an excellent way to have the students learn and feel like a community. Though, I will admit depending on the severity of a student's disability it could be more difficult for them to participate in the online community. This would call for assistance from a teacher or even perhaps another student to enhance the community feeling even more. But pros and cons aside, it really does not matter what my personal opinion is for technology will continue to progress and we as educators need to keep up to date lest we become obsolete to employers. 

"What is the Internet, Anyway?" Oh, how far we have come.

For class I have watched this video, What is the Internet Anyway?, and I honestly found myself laughing through the whole thing. Not because I thought found anchors' intelligence laughable, but rather because there was a time where people honestly didn’t know what the internet was. And I know that time existed, I remember having the same confusion over the @ symbol and what it represented – when I was about 6 years old (if that). I had my own email address by the time I was 8, and at the time I relied on my parents to tell my what the internet was and how to use it, but when I really think about it I know we were all learning at the same time. None of us knew really what it was or how to use it. But by the time I was 9 or 10 I used the internet constantly, my knowledge of its uses and functions far surpassed my parents', and though I needed to rely on my older sisters some of the time, really the children of the family were the only ones who really under. It is because, as described to the class, we were the ones who grew up with it, we are the ‘digital natives’, while our parents who did not grow up with it are the ‘digital immigrants’. They seem like apt titles for us, seeing as I am constantly aiding my parents in their attempts to check their emails or order something offline. It’s amazing how far the world has come technologically, and I can only wonder: what technology in the future are my children going to need to aid me with? It’s astounding how infinite the possibilities are. And this is exactly the same for my future students. Every single one of our students is going to be growing up in an age where the internet always was. For them, there was never a time where limitless knowledge wasn't available at their fingertips. And as technology continues to develop, they're going to be the ones who understand it as simply as they breathe. As teachers we are going to need to say 100% up-to-date with all new technology. We need to know what our students are using and learn how to utilize it in our teaching environments. This is the only way we are going to be able to be effective teachers in such a technologically advanced world