Blog Post #5

           Web 2.0 tools provide assistance to teachers to help in the education of their students. Some of the most helpful are blogs, in order to keep the class up to date and act as a newsletter, as well as Diigo, which provides the ease of bookmarking pages to return to at a later time. Twitter is also useful to communicate with authors and businesses, but I would not say it is very useful for a classroom, as there are so many people who post opinions as facts that it becomes hard to sort through them. Having a class wiki provides an interesting opportunity. On one hand, students can add information collaboratively, while on the other hand, I would say it is more effective and beneficial for students to write their own essays.

An interesting web 2.0 tool that I use and work with often is Wattpad. Users are allowed to write stories and upload them to Wattpad where readers can read the story for free. With over 300 million stories available, the possibilities for learning are endless. With multimedia imbedded into the story, stories can now range from blogs to cookbooks to choose your own adventure stories. Wattpad is an essential web 2.0 tool for teachers and students, especially English teachers. Wattpad. 

I believe the technology of augmented reality holds the biggest promise for education. With virtual reality, students can virtually travel to almost anywhere. They can go on field trips to Rome while being in a classroom in Florida. Novels that are being read in schools can be converted to this technology, and students can at long last step into the world of a book. This will help them better understand the material they are reading.

(I included the link to the educational tool as a hyperlink.)