Week 4-Blog Posting #8- Reflection on Blogging

Liz Dalton

Full Sail University

I defiantly enjoy learning new Web 2.0 tools, I think it is so cool all the things we can do via the Internet. I really like the ability to share with others. I have been putting my students in groups more to do assignments collaboratively and I have been so impressed with what I am getting. I also think students learn more from each other than just me lecturing. My childcare class is going to start blogging their reflections of our preschool. We start the preschool on November 10^th and I have been telling them that we will be reflecting via blog. I asked them if any of them have written on a blog before and none of the have so this should be a great experience for them and me. I know I have learned much from reflection. The blogging has made me summarize what I learned from the research and assignments. I am excited to try glogster (glogster.com) after listening to Tereza Vieira on wimba last night. In fact I might use schooldesk (schooldesk.net) as a web site for my action research project. Tereza has many great ideas that I would like to try. Which brings me to the problem with the web 2.0 tools. Some are very time consuming to learn such as second life. Second life also requires high speed Internet that is not available where I live. I can see value in using second life, but with the amount of time it takes to learn it, the speed of the Internet and the fact that it is blocked I don’t see me using second life. I will have to stick to Google and the other sites that are not blocked. I have been trying to talk to my administration about unlocking face book at least for the teachers so we can collaborate. I did get my Vice Principal to join face book and try it. He is one of my critical friends for my action research project. I have yet to have any of my critical friends comment on our group face book account about my action research project. I am going to send out an e-mail reminding them of it. Which is another draw back of social collaboration. I have tried to get 3 group face book accounts going and no one is interested which is another frustration. I am definitely a pioneer at my school and I will try to keep going forward.