LIBR 246-04/13 Web 2.0 (Fall 2010)

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How has your view of social software changed since starting the course?

 I was never aware of how many Web 2.0 experts there are out there that we can connect with through social software tools, which makes me feel like I am not alone in learning new technology tools. Whenever I have questions, I went to the Drupal to read the lectures and my classmate responses. I was a newbie of using social networking except Blogging & wiki. I did create one for my students in the past so that they can post their reports online so that their friends and relatives can read it. This is fun for my student because they are all new immigrates.  Posting their favorite story book reports online definitely motivates them to learn the second language. However, I did block any comments for their blog because bad comments can hurt their feelings.

2. What technology did you find most interesting for your personal use? What technology did you think would be most useful professionally?

Screenr for screencasting is the tool I find most interesting to use. Since my school district blocked the students from accessing Youtube, I can use screenr instead, because there is no need to download any software, and we can keep the video private. My fifth graders enjoy using this tool for their project.

3. What surprised you during the course?

I never thought that I would create an account on Facebook, Twitter, Delicious bookmarking tool, & Flickr before this course, but I did create one for each to work on my assignments, because I wanted to be invisible in order to protect my online identity.  Prezi presentation tool is so fun to use. Presently, I am not resisting these tools, as long as I know that we can set the social soft ware tools to private. Furthermore, I wouldn’t give out a lot of my personal information online.

4. What suggestions do you have for improving the learning activities (exercises, assignments, blog posts, readings, examples, etc.)?

Thanks to this class, but I just thought that the learning activities were too much for me at the beginning, which is why I lost the first two exercises. It is okay to skip my points for exercise two, since we did have allowance for skipping on week posting. Thank you again.

5. How did your experience using Drupal differ from your experience in Angel classrooms (or classes using other traditional course management systems)?

Drupal is much more flexible to use. It is an open source content on managing platform and powering many websites and applications. Whenever I have any question, I just need to check it out back and forth. Drupal is user friendly and much more fun. I cannot believe that I can embed videos in Drupal.

6. Looking back, how would you sum up your experience?

This class is very exciting for me. I will apply the web 2.0 technologies for my students. The most important is to teach them the 21^st century skills and have them to surf safely on the web.