BP09_2009102_Web_2.0_Tools_Dabbleboard

Don't Doddle bored, Dabbleboard!

Dabbleboard Screenshot

I discovered Dabbleboard.com during the EDE course and really appreciated it’s easy to learn and easy to use functionality. Dabbleboard.com offers online collaboration tools for individuals and businesses. Like many online tools there is a free basic version and a more advanced licensed version. For most classrooms, the free version is sufficient.

The primary tool on Dabbleboard.com is an interactive whiteboard with drawing, text, and line tools. The most impressive aspect of the program is how easy it is to use, within five to ten minutes you and your students will be able to create custom graphic organizers, import and share media, and host group planning and discussions.

In my classroom, I can use Dabbleboard to create project outlines, discussion templates, timelines, or types of visual maps. As your drawing, the interface can detect and complete most shapes. The shapes can then be moved, resized, color filled, and copied. Menus and operations are in plain site and most tasks can be accomplished by just clicking on the object you’ve created.

You can create custom urls and invite students, who in turn can in real time join and edit the project. With multiple drawings and urls, teachers can monitor student progress, offer suggestions, and facilitate various groups working within the same or different projects.

A chat feature allows you and the students to communicate silently or with a little more effort and resources a video chat option is available.

Once the project is complete it can be stored for future edits or templates. There is also the option to download your work to your local computer or removable drive. Projects on Dabbleboard are secure and private, however, you may want to import from or share drawings with a community of users by making work public.

Like Google Docs and other tools, Dabbleboard is hosted online meaning students have access anywhere and internet connection is available. Dabbleboard is free and easy too use, and provides a tool for engage students that are visual and artistic learners.

Reference

Dabbleboard . (Producer). (n.d.) Dabbleboard tour. Available from http://www.dabbleboard.com/tour

Goins, B., (Image creator). (2009). Dabbleboard screenshot. Retreived October 09, 2009, from: http://www.dabbleboard.com/draw/bgoins/greenhealing

BP08_2009102_Web_2.0_Tools_Del.icio.us

That's Del.icio.us

Delicious.com or Del.icio.us is an online social bookmarking resources meaning I can share my favorite online resource links with others and likewise gain access to their bookmarks. If I have a personal webpage or other resource that I don’t want to share, I can choose to protect that bookmark by making it private.

Because it’s live and on the web and not on stored locally within a browser it can be accessed from any computer or device with Internet access. This makes sharing resources with students exceptionally easy without having to write long urls on a whiteboard. The only downside of course is missing the entertaining parade of students traveling back and forth from the board to the computer in an effort to remember and enter the website address correctly.

With the resources shared and available online, students can also access them from home making the project easier. Students can simply click on the link without worry or excuse of entering an incorrect web address.

Another import feature of Del.icio.us is the ability to tag bookmarks. Tags are single word descriptors that are assigned to bookmarks by users. It is much like coding or using keywords in database or web pages. The use of tags eliminates the need for hierarchical system of folders within folders, where bookmarks become lost or forgotten. Tags can be searched and sorted for easy recovery and the customization allows you additional flexibility, for example you could tag bookmarks with a specific project, class, or even school name.

The social aspect of Del.icio.us provides an element of social action between yourself, students, and other teachers or field experts. This expansion provides the opportunity to serendipitously discover resources that your or your students may have never located using traditional search methods. Social bookmarking provides an exponential amount of resources and often the number of individuals sharing the same bookmark provides a clue about the websites popularity and related value.

Del.icio.us also provides a tool for creating communities or networks. You have the ability of viewing and tracking bookmarks from your peers or students.

References

Goins, B., (Image creator). (2009). Delicious screenshot. Retreived October 09, 2009, from: http://www.delicious.com/billygoins

BP07_2009102_Web_2.0_Tools_Comment_@Beckie_Lamborn

Lamborn_Beckie_BP3_2009102_web 2.0_tools_Open-Source_iGoogleDocs

As an elementary teacher I may not be able to use iGoogle with my students, but iGoogle is a wonderful web 2.0 tool that could help me as a teacher to organize and pull together ideas. The iGoogle page is a platform that allows me as a teacher to put things that interest me and things that apply to my teaching all in one location. After I set up a free account on the Google site, I am given a free Gmail account, so I can receive or send emails.

The iGoogle account can be accessed and set up through my Google account. This iGoogle account gives me opportunities to create pages that I title according to my personal needs. For the FSO program I have designated more that four pages with page names that can be opened to reveal related information. The page that I am most comfortable navigating during this early stage of getting my feet wet with web 2.0 tools is the Google Docs page. When Google docs page is opened up I can click on documents that have been created by my teammates and me at FullSail. The idea that documents can be created online by a group of people is new and exciting, and having been assigned projects has further allowed me to understand the potential of this collaborative tool. To this point I did not invite teammates to the documents in my file, I was just a collaborator. I think I could use this iGoogle doc tool with fellow teachers, if we were going to create a lesson plan from our homes during our after school hours, free time at school, or at our convenience. I would have to help my teachers set up iGoogle accounts, and I would then have to create a document and invite them to work with me on lessons or other collaborative writings.

Communications through Internet are taking new directions as people are not only receiving information, but now they are responding and creating the information to share with others. According to Dan Woods, a chief technology officer, this “open-source” communication where software tools are provided for people to collaborate and create on the Internet is available due to…“a community of people who are dedicated to working together in a highly collaborative and evolutionary way” (Schrum, p. 50). Programmers are providing source codes “for the sheer enjoyment of seeing their creation used” (p. 13).

Resources:

Schrum, L. & Solomon, G. (2007). Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools. Washington D. C.: ISTE.

Image is free power point clipart adjusted by Beckie Lamborn (2009)

My Comment

1 comments:

Billy Goins said...

Hi Becky,
I chose Google Docs as a web 2.0 tool as well. I know that most of my students have Internet access but don't have access to programs such as Microsoft Offices. This is a great way to allow students to work on projects at home and even collaborate together. Many of them spend hours on websites such as MySpace or Facebook. I see Google Docs as a way to apply that social experience to classroom projects. I can also log in myself and monitor the documents and offer suggestions or just get involved in the process.

October 11, 2009 7:35 PM

BP06_2009102_Web_2.0_Tools_Google_Docs

What's Up, Google Docs!

Google Docs is a web based productivity suite similar to Microsoft Office or OpenOffice with some distinct features. The files can be accessed and edited from any device with an Internet connection. Not only can files be shared with or easily copied to others but can also be edited live by several users during a single session. Other advantages include safe online storage with an auto-save feature, there are several options for importing and exporting various file types that are highly compatible with other software programs, and files can be attached and emailed using Google’s Gmail application. Aside from easy access, another advantage of web-based software is that there isn’t any software to install or update on your local computers.

The best part is that all these resources are free. For me this means that most of my students will be able to access and work on projects at home eliminating many of the standard I left it on the table or my dog ate it excuses.

The other advantage is that my students are very active on social networking sites, such as MySpace, BeBo, and Facebook, I see the collaborative aspect of Google Docs as a way of tapping into that social nature. Students can work on assignments together at home or in the classroom and I can log in, monitor progress, make suggestions, and facilitate their efforts. As students make changes the revision is recorded and I can see what’s been changed, when it was changed, and who made the change. At any point files may be selectively shared or kept or made private.

Google Docs contains a word process, spreadsheet, presentation tool, and a forms tool with literally thousands of premade templates available for use. There are writing tools, calculators, calendars, cards, essentially something for every classroom.

Google provides great resources for getting started (http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs.html) and there are teacher communities for collaboration, sharing resources, and problem solving.

References

[Untitled photograph of Google Docs]. Retrieved Oct 10, 2009, from:

http://www.google.com/google-d-s/images/tour1.gif

BP05_2009102_Social_Bookmarking

Searching through folder after folder, reminiscent of the overstuffed filing cabinets of years past, Internet bookmarks become lost in hierarchical layers, misplaced, mislabeled, and often only found by re-searching the web from which they came. Like a set of cars keys, saved resource links are only useful if they can be found when needed.

The common method of saving and organizing web site addresses on a local computer’s hard drive is inadequate when compared to the potential offerings of the World Wide Web. Traditional bookmarks and favorites folders have limited capabilities for organizing, accessing, and sharing Internet resource links (Fryer, 2007).


Web-based social bookmarking tools simultaneously organize and categorize links by allowing users to add sortable, searchable, descriptive tags. For the individual, this equates to easy organization, quick retrieval, and expanded access from any Internet accessible device, and through websites such as Del.icio.us and Digg.com the ability to share and discover online resource treasures (Gordon-Murnane, 2006). For the educator, the social aspect provides a collection of resources, a means of collaboration, and access to a community of subject specific experts (Etches-Johnson, 2006).


In the classroom, teachers can easily share a collection of web links for course projects and allow students to collect and share resources with team members. Cannata (2009) noted that adapting the tagging/folksonomy approach found in social bookmarking and other web 2.0 strengthened essential elements such as collaboration, gratification, and ownership and take advantage of adaptability, connectivity, and pluralism.


Social bookmarking tools provide an efficient method for organizing web-based resources and making them widely accessible. The social aspect provides a large collection of resource gems and expertise that expedites lesson planning and student activities.

Note: Could not remove spacing between lines in reference section.

References

Cannata, C. (2009). Folksonomy, tagging and taxonomy for effective learning: Perspectives of learning 2.0 in the XXI century. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 4(2), 26-32.

Etches-Johnson, A. (2006). The brave new world of social bookmarking: Everything you always wanted to know but were too afraid to ask. Feliciter, 52(2), 56-58.

Fryer, W. (2007). Social bookmarks 101. TechEdge, 27(1), 22-23.

Gordon-Murnane, L. (2006). Social bookmarking, folksonomies, and web 2.0 tools. Searcher, 14(6), 26-38.

BP04_2009101_iGoogle_Screen_Shots

Here are my iGoogle screen shots.

BP03_2009101_Response_to_Anti-Teaching

Based on the assumption that the educational systems as we know them do not work for the vast majority of the students moving through them, what would work?

At the end of each school, I look back and reflect on a similar series of questions, what worked well, what didn’t work, and what changes are necessary for tomorrow? The answers are as varied and numerous as the 100 plus students that will have pass in and out of my classroom during the course of the day.

Each student will enter possessing a personalized set of talents, challenges, wants, and values. Regardless of the curriculum, delivery method, and available resources, as demonstrated and back by Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory and Eric Jensen’s discussion on Brain-Based Learning, teaching begins with knowing and understanding your students.

Through knowledge, time, and experience, teachers are keenly aware of relevance of the material being taught and the challenge becomes sharing that relevancy to unaware and unconnected students.

This challenge is made more difficult within the confines of an educational system that defines success and channels resources based on a single annual institutional test.

For many teachers, this is where technology integration plays vital role and provides the means to individualize curriculum, engage students, and create connections for learning and meaningful understanding.

Web-based tools and collaborative communities provide a variety of mediums for creating, presenting, and discussing material and go beyond the typical classroom curriculum. With minimal effort, content can be easily adapted to accommodate multiple learning styles and skill levels.

With these tools students can progress at their own pace and review specific instructions or material as often as needed. With proper guidance and instructions, students have the opportunity to facilitate and take ownership of the learning process creating excitement and fueling a life long appreciation for learning.