#5 This is a long one: beware!

A web 2.0 tool that is useful in the classroom is a class blog. I think that having a class blog can be a very useful in especially the K-5 classrooms because it is a way for teachers to be able to share and communicate what is going on in the classroom to the parents of the students. By using a class blog, parents can see homework assignments, important dates, and even their students work. From the teachers aspect, this can help in their professional development because it allows them to stay in close contact with their students parents without having to reach out to ever single parent individually, it can save time and make things easier and more interactive! I think that having a twitter is not useful in a classroom setting because there is a lot on twitter that is very inappropriate in a school setting and may cause controversy with in the classroom. In order to use a class blog all you need is a computer, with a motherboard and a monitor, and internet connection. It is not necessary to have other peripherals plugged in and the network needed is just the internet.

      In another one of my classes, a group was giving a presentation and instead of using a regular power point, they used Prezi. I personally have never actually made a Prezi but it looked very interesting to i decided to give it a whirl. In order to properly write this blog post I decided I must first dive into this web 2.0 tool Prezi and make a silly one myself just to see how it works. First of all, when you are making your account, with every answer you fill in, they give you a nice little remark such as "Nice name!" and "Sounds interesting!", these comments already sparked an interest for me, I want to know more!
      They started my (free) membership by first giving me a quick and not too in-depth tutorial about what Prezi does. It basically makes a huge concept map that zooms into detail so you can see relationships and keep your audience engaged, COOL. What I discovered while making a non-informational Prezi presentation is that the layout and they way you make it is very similar to creating a Powerpoint but there is already slide transitions built in. You can do everything you can do in a powerpoint on Prezi, just much cooler and more efficient. Also a cool feature I discovered in Prezi is that you can search and insert images onto your presentation within the website , without having to go to google to search and insert. There is so many more features in Prezi that would take me days to explain so here is the domain so you can try it yourself! https://prezi.com/

So last but certainly not least, I also had the opportunity to explore the fun and useful application Webspiration this week. I have always hated making concept maps. I found it difficult to draw everything and make it look pretty while still showing the relationships, but webspiration does just that. I learned how to make a neat, informative, and useful concept map at the click of a button. Also if you really aren't feeling the whole map thing, you can convert the information into an outline in a matter of seconds. I was just trying to figure out how to use the website for this assignment but for future reference I would like to color code it better and add more images into my concept map to make it prettier and more visual. I am  a very visual learner and this is definitely an awesome way to study for me and I can't wait to use it in the future.