Article review-Enhancing Instruction

My article entitled Enhancing Instruction with Web 2.0 by Chris Riedel. In this article was discussed why educators should embrace technology. Our students already do!

With budgets becoming smaller and education expectations becoming higher, using creative solutions to meet instructional difficulties becomes key. With a little extra time and effort everyone can use programs available on the web to enhance their daily instruction. If you take the time to use these tools you will soon see an impact in student learning.

Sites were given as examples to help the reader understand technology.

Social bookmarking: some examples given were Delicious, Stumbleupon and Digg as wonderful resources to share information. Teachers can create a list of websites for students to follow through Delicious for example. By book-marking these sites it makes it easier for students to access pertinent information even if they are gone. It can also be closed so students can not change the websites listed.

Photo sharing: can be completed in sites like Flickr and Picasa. These sites allow photos to be visually changed for creative expression. Beyond that, photos can be tagged, free storage and you have access to thousands of user generated images.

Blogs and Wiki: blogs and wiki are available for no cost (or minimal cost) giving students the ability to collaborate and create an environment where learning can be shared and edited by a larger group.

Twitter: According to Futch, "Twitter is a great way to push all sorts of information, from announcements to homework assignments to last minute notifications that might not be appropriate for other venues."

Wordle: Go crazy with words! Wordle allows you to take terms, vocabulary or have students answer questions and put the answer in a jigsaw picture creating a creative picture to enhance vocabulary. This program also creates a word cloud allowing students to see what words have a limited use and what words have been overused. It’s picturally amazing!



Riedel, Chris. Enhancing Instruction with Web 2.0. The Journal. 01/20/10
Retrieved on March 9, 2010
http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/01/20/enhancing-instruction-with-web-2.0.aspx