Villain vs. Hero Ning Profile

ning-link

Some ways of using social networking.

     Social networking is becoming an important part of education and can be vast in its use.  Social networking allows students and educators the ability to stay in touch and expand learning possibilities.  Social networking can allow students to work in conjunction with other students in a given class, school, region or even multinational projects.  It allows facilitators the ability to monitor the progress and achievements of the students as they work on projects and gives them flexibility in the curriculum.  Social networking also allows schools and facilitators exchange ideas and give updates on innovative ideas on uses of technology in the classroom.  Social networking has opened a whole new aspect of using technology in the classroom.  Innovations such as Skype have also allowed individuals and classes to do live interaction with other individuals and classes in real time.  This is a powerful and important tool in allowing co-educational experiences between different classes or individuals in different geographical regions.  Social networking allows the students to get out of a classroom and explore the world from their computers.

Deep Thoughts

Mehmet and Brian: What is Culture

Google Docs Link 

Google Docs is a very diversified on-line program that is fairly easy to use and in its simplest form is free. I have used Google Docs for other projects and have found some problems with some of the formatting issues. These are usually simple to work around and should not be a large enough reason to not use the program. Google Docs is similar to many office type programs already on the market. Google dock can be edited on, used for joint projects as we did, used for peer reviews and comments. Google Docs can be used on Google sites, or on Google's social website- Google +. Google Docs offers a lot of diversity in their product for classrooms to explore and they offer the option of how they are to be published. It is easy to set up a closed network that could only be accessed by a classroom to offer security to the students. Since online security is a major issue with younger students, Google Docs is a good choice for the classroom setting. Assignments can be created or uploaded for a classroom. Students can then log in and work on the project and the teacher can monitor the progress of the group, or individual progress.

voicethread-What is in my pocket.

     VoiceThread and other types of media presentation can be useful tools in the classroom for students as well as teachers.  This tool could be useful for reports, presentations as well as web based instruction for students. These presentations can include video, pictures and recorded audio.  The audio, video, pictures can either be created on the site or they can be uploaded from sites or a computer, phone or other digital media storage device.  With this particular site I was not impressed by the lack of editing options or the lack of a clock to time a production.  The options to download and use in other media was also limited unless a user is willing to pay for that option.  Not having an option to download decreases its functionality in that whatever mistakes or additions to a presentation may require redoing a complete track of audio.  This is not always as feasible as it may always seem, so it may be better to record audio on an editor then upload it to this site to use with a photo or video presentation.