Web tools
_ Before I attended this class I thought that I was
aware of the basic web tools which might be helpful to me as a future teacher. Within the first three session,
however, this class has shown me that this was not the case.
First of all we had to create a new email account on Yahoo.de. After that we were able to register for several new web pages in order to enlarge our knowledge as well as to find web tools which would help us to prepare lessons, to work with classes or simply to use the internet more efficiently. We learned how to store material or how to work with certain web tools, which I am going to present in the following.
First of all we had to create a new email account on Yahoo.de. After that we were able to register for several new web pages in order to enlarge our knowledge as well as to find web tools which would help us to prepare lessons, to work with classes or simply to use the internet more efficiently. We learned how to store material or how to work with certain web tools, which I am going to present in the following.
www.delicious.com
Delicious.com
is a website
where you can save important bookmarks online. In my opinion, this
is a great tool because
everyone has certainly once faced the problem of forgetting important research
material at home when it is needed
urgently at university. Delicious.com offers the solution because you just need
your Delicious.com ID and your
password to access all stored material. Moreover, you can tag your bookmarks in order to organize
and categorize them. You
can also share your bookmarks with friends, colleagues or other teachers, so
you are able to collaborate with one another and profit from each other's work.
www.twitter.com
_ Honestly, I would never have registered on Twitter were
it not for this class where I was more or less “forced” to do it. I do not see the reason
of using Twitter neither as a
future teacher nor in my private life.
Everything you can discover on Twitter, you can discover somewhere else on the internet as well, without
giving your name or private details away. Once you start following people or
organizations on Twitter, you
get spammed by all the information they
tweeted. So, you have to sort out useful information from irrelevant tweeds and spend a lot of time on reading. So
you rather visit special teacher websites or inform yourself by reading
magazines or books.
www.netvibes.com
_
This is a really good and helpful web tool since it
could reduce your daily surfing time on the internet. By using Netvibes you do not have to go to your
email account, you do not have to check the news or the weather because on Netvibes
you can see it all at one glance.
You can create your own, individual desk which is related to your
personal interests.
www.weebly.com
I already worked with Weebly.com in the "presenting content" course last summer. I like Weebly since it is easy to understand, both its basic functions and features. Moreover, it is for free and therefore affordable for everyone which is, especially for us as students, a big advantage. You can work with it easily: you can download and add pictures from the internet, you can change colors or font sizes in order to make your hompage more attractive. Simply, you can create your own individual hompage without having a well-founded education on homepage design.
Reflection
_As already mentioned above, I cannot see the advantage of using Twitter neither as
a teacher nor as a private person, but I admit that Netvibes.com and Delicious.com
could really save time and work, which is really important for daily lessons and its preparations beforehand. Therefore I would definitely make use of Delicious. I like the fact that pupils can collaborate with one another and profit form each other´s work. Whole teaching units could be based on Delicious, e.g. pupils could do a research project on a certain topic and store the material on Delicious, thus, they can share it with their classmates or others and everyone is allowed to add new ideas. Moreover, it could be used as a kind of personal folder so that pupils do not run the risk of forgetting important materials at home.
Although, I actually do not like Twitter, it might be helpful to get deeper into a topic. Teachers could tell their pupils which persons or instutions they should follow and they might receive interesting tweeds which they would not had get to know otherwise. Moreover, they could get into contact with persons abroad and enhance their language skills. Nevertheless, I am still sceptical of using Twitter in classrooms. On the one hand it could be helpful getting deeper into a certain topic but on the other hand pupils run the risk of using Twitter not properly. They follow each other and might tweed nonsense and rather distract each other than benefit from utilizing it.
I like Netvibes since you can create your individual desk and see everything you are interested in at one glance. Teachers can direct pupils interest on a topic (or pupils are allowed to choose their own topics) which they have to observe over a certain periode of time. After that everyone has to write an essay about its development. It could be a project, which could end with a presentation or with a book including all topics.
Since Weebly is a free tool and easy to understand, it could be integrated into lessons quite often. Once pupils start working with it, they are getting into it and they can create a website really easily. Instead of presenting certain topics on posters, they can create pages on their website, thus, they have for example their own website for the subject English including all topics they dealt with. Furthermore, they can create websites on certain topics in groups.
All in all, I think the proper use of web tools is important to make the lessons more creative and varied. Im my opinion pupils like the exposure with new web tools hence, they like the lessons that refer to web tools. I can already say that I have, compared to the beginning of the semester, really deepened my knowledge of web tools after only a few classes and I am looking forward to enhance these skills by exploring the world wide web.
Although, I actually do not like Twitter, it might be helpful to get deeper into a topic. Teachers could tell their pupils which persons or instutions they should follow and they might receive interesting tweeds which they would not had get to know otherwise. Moreover, they could get into contact with persons abroad and enhance their language skills. Nevertheless, I am still sceptical of using Twitter in classrooms. On the one hand it could be helpful getting deeper into a certain topic but on the other hand pupils run the risk of using Twitter not properly. They follow each other and might tweed nonsense and rather distract each other than benefit from utilizing it.
I like Netvibes since you can create your individual desk and see everything you are interested in at one glance. Teachers can direct pupils interest on a topic (or pupils are allowed to choose their own topics) which they have to observe over a certain periode of time. After that everyone has to write an essay about its development. It could be a project, which could end with a presentation or with a book including all topics.
Since Weebly is a free tool and easy to understand, it could be integrated into lessons quite often. Once pupils start working with it, they are getting into it and they can create a website really easily. Instead of presenting certain topics on posters, they can create pages on their website, thus, they have for example their own website for the subject English including all topics they dealt with. Furthermore, they can create websites on certain topics in groups.
All in all, I think the proper use of web tools is important to make the lessons more creative and varied. Im my opinion pupils like the exposure with new web tools hence, they like the lessons that refer to web tools. I can already say that I have, compared to the beginning of the semester, really deepened my knowledge of web tools after only a few classes and I am looking forward to enhance these skills by exploring the world wide web.
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