Post #5

Web 2.0 and Web Hunt

     One Web 2.0 tool that I find extremely useful and well-designed is Goodreads.  This website provides its users a place to keep track of books they have read, books they would like to read, and books that they are currently reading.  It allows the user to rate his books, write a review of the book, and read reviews written by other people.  The user can become friends with other users and view the books that they are reading and their comments on the books.  This website also has an app that can be accessed from any smartphone.  

    I would like to become an AP Literature teacher, so this website would be extremely useful for me in the classroom.  I would have all of my students create a Goodreads account, and we would all become friends.  I would require them to add each of the books we read in the class and write reviews on them and give them star ratings.  They would also be required to view their classmates' reviews and respond to them.  This website would be extremely beneficial because it would allow the students to engage in the material and make it more interesting.  

     Web 2.0 is very beneficial for K-12 education.  The podcast mentioned that it can be a very good tool for students to become actively involved in the material.  It allows students to take the material and think about it in a different way.  Tools such as Goodreads, Prezi, and many other Web 2.0 tools can exponentially help students in the classroom.  Not only do they become more involved, it is much easier to grab the students' attention and make them interested in the subject.  

     I did not learn much from the activity last week, Web Hunt.  Most of it involved simply typing words into Google and copying and pasting information.  I have been doing this from the time that I began using computers in Elementary School, so it was no new information for me.  Though I didn't learn anything, the skill of searching for data on the internet is a useful tool for a teacher.  There are so many resources on the internet that can exponentially benefit a teacher in the classroom.