Jessica PickrellWeb 2.0 ToolsEDN 303

1. Typing Web: Learn to type onlineThis is a website that will teach you how to type. It gives you clear descriptions and tells you about the location of the keys. It’s really easy to understand and it really gives you help with typing faster. It keeps track of your progress and tells you how many words per minute you can type. It also tells you your accuracy. All skill levels will benefit from this program.

2. Tikatok: Imagine a Story. Create a Book.This is a community for children to write, illustrate and publish a real book. This site allows children the experience of seeing their story being published into a book. It allows their imagination to go wild and for them to grow as writers. You can start from scratch and just start writing or you can pick a topic. You can name the book, choose characters, add pictures.

3. Babbel: Learn New Languages OnlineWith this tool you can learn words and phrases in foreign languages and connect with people from all over the world. The languages offered include, German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish. This system combines effective education methods with state of the art technology. Interactive online courses will improve your grammar and vocabulary skills. It now even has voice recognition software.

Tool Instructional? Meaningful to Student?

Will assist in lessons?

Creative?

Typing Web Yes Yes Yes NoTikatok Yes Yes Yes YesBabbel Yes Yes No No

I think all of these tools would be useful in the classroom. The first tool I listed was Typing Web. Many students struggle with typing and the speed and accuracy of the skill. With the world’s technology growing I believe this is a very important skill to have. One has to be able to type in this day and learning the skills necessary is so important. This tool I can use throughout the day, if students have finished their work they can go on the classroom computer and practice their typing skills. I could also use it during different group work. Having one of the groups working on typing would benefit the students as well.

The next tool I found was called Tikatok. This would really be up to the parents if they wanted to pay for the book to be published and sent to them or to the classroom. I

think this would be helpful to use during a lesson of different parts of stories or during a writing process. This tool was pretty neat because they got to design the book itself and write the story! I could have the students do this as a homework assignment. Just to go home and write the story and either print it out, or if the parent wanted to buy it then for them to do that. This would be useful to the student to learn everything about the different parts of the book and improving the writing.

The last tool I found was called Babbel. This tool was learning a foreign language. Now-a-days this country is full of people who speak different languages and many colleges now require a class in a foreign language so it is so important to start this learning process when the children are young. I plan on incorporating some foreign languages into my classroom the best I can. This tool would be great for students to be able to go online and learn some new words and share them with the class. Again this could be when a student has finished the class work or during group sessions.