fully. JogtheWeb also allows students to comment on the sites,
another possible component of an assignment. One of the most
enjoyable jogs I have assembled has also offered an opportunity
for students to learn firsthand how unreliable information on the
Web can be. I chose sixteen bogus sites for that jog. Students in
groups of three had to evaluate three of the sites. After we had
discusse d how to evaluate sites, students turned to the jog, not
knowing all the sites were fraudulent. The students reported to
the whole class on their sites, explaining why the sites were legitimate or bogus because some of the sites were persuasive
enough to make students believe they were legitimate. That assessment provoked yet another discussion about determining
legitimacy in sources.
InstaGrok, a search engine, allows users to create a free
account and keep track of Web searches. It yields better results
than Google, Bing, or Yahoo, but users still must evaluate the
sources. The key features include an interactive “concept chart”
of results on a topic, history of searches, and a journal. Clicking
on a circle in the chart will produce additional results. The
searches return Web sites, videos, and images. InstaGrok will
also create a quiz on material from the sites. The journal permits
users to click Web sites to “pin” Web sites, videos, and images for
further study and reading. Perhaps as important, the journal also
allows users to write their own notes. The journal gives us one
more way to remind students that keeping notes as we read is a
useful way to remember and incorporate ideas.
Using Themeefy, students and faculty can create online
magazines consisting of Web sites, videos, images, and their own
text. The magazine is attractive and interactive. I created a
Themeefy magazine about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The magazine included information on Shelley herself, the story, and other tidbits to enhance the reading for students. For a recent workshop, I created a magazine on hypertension. Themeefy offers
another way to pull material together to engage students—and
faculty. We can have students create their own magazines on
specific topics.
A number of online bulletin boards are available for our
use, but Linoit has become one of my favorites. It allows anonymous posts, but I prefer having students create an account so
their names appear on their posts. On Linoit, we can put notes,
questions, videos, images, and links. We can have boards on the
open Web or keep them private. Recently, I created a board for
a Comp II class and invited the students by email so only they
and I could see and post on the board. I put questions relating to
a story they had read and asked them to answer the questions,
post a picture relevant to the story, and respond to a classmate’s post.
I am sure you have seen word clouds, groups of words
that form an attractive picture. At Wordle.net, we can paste
words to develop a picture. I use the snipping tool in Microsoft
Office to turn the Wordle into a PNG which I can then insert into
Word, PowerPoint or Blackboard. We can have students write
their own text and put it into Wordle; then they can identify
repeated words, or words that stand out over the others. While
you can think of ways to use word clouds on your own, at 21st
Century Educational Technology and Learning by Michael Gorman, read “108 Ways to Use Word Clouds in the Classroom…
Word Clouds in Education Series: Part 2.”
Are you tired of PowerPoint for presentations? Try
Glogster! Glogster is an online poster site. Users can put videos,
links, pictures, and text onto the posters. I created a Glogster
assignment so online students could introduce themselves to
the rest of the class; students had to incorporate specific items
and they received a grade on the Glog. In a Strategies class, students taught a simple component of the class using Glogster; the
students had to consist of an appropriate video, pictures, and
text to demonstrate their subject such as note taking, or testtaking skills.
JogtheWeb, InstaGrok, Themeefy, Linoit, Wordle, and
Glogsterl allow us to engage students by using technology that
lends itself to helping students learn. All of these tools are as
useful as we make them. I challenge you to choose two of the
tools and create an account so you can fully investigate the opportunities the site offers. We could begin an online repository
of assignments we share across disciplines. Attend the next
workshop to learn more about Web 2.0 tools; the list of tools
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