FREE ONLINE WEB 2.0 TOOLS

QR codes are one of the newest tools that educators are beginning to adopt; however, they are not the only ones.  For a few years now I have been collecting free online web 2.0 tools that would be suitable for the classroom.  I thought I would share some of my treasures with you all today.  I hope that you'll find a few or a lot that will interest you enough to share with your staff or try them for yourselves.

BLOGS

As of now I have about seven blogs.  Each one of them serves a particular purpose.  I wanted to share a few of them with you.  I think blogs are an excellent way for a teacher to use as evidence for all the wonderful things going on in the classroom.  I like to think of it as a portfolio of artifacts and don't we all need documentation for what we do these days?  There are lots of blog sites but the one I like best is blogger.com.  My first blog, vikingart.blogspot.com was created several years ago.  It deals with my international travels, my personal artwork and my students at WCHS.

I teach an Arts and Technology course in fall semester.  For a couple of years now I have put all my lessons online.  Check it out at artstech2011.blogspot.com .  The majority of my lessons were created in Google Docs and then hyperlinked back to my blog.  I can easily show anyone all my lessons for the whole semester.  They are right there at my fingertips.

You may be wondering how I created my lessons that my students click on.  I first create them in word and then import them to my Google Docs account as a PDF.  In Google Docs each tutorial has its own URL and I just hyperlink to that address.  That's it.  By the way if you're not using Google Docs I would strongly suggest that you consider it.  This is where I store my lesson plans - in the cloud so that I will have access to them anywhere.  Then I email them to my assistant principal and that's it.

Let's take a look at my Google Docs account.  Click on https://docs.google.com/
Now I'll sign in.

One more thing I would suggest using in the Google Docs suite is Google Reader.  I am presently keeping up with out 100 websites and blogs about anything from art, education, and technology.  Instead of me constantly having to check and see if changes or updates have been made, Google Reader allerts me.  This is my favorite PLC.

Now back to blogs:

My newest blog other than this one was created to document all m lesson plans for my Art One classes.  It can be found at artone2012.blogspot.com .  I have not publicized this blog since we have had a change in student images without forms signed by their parents.  I wanted to include videos in this blog.  I hope all my students will return the forms signed by their parents.

And finally I wanted to show you one of the blogs that belongs to one of my Arts and Technology class.  Each student was required to create a blog and upload his very best work.  This incorporated Evaluating from Blooms and Creating as well.  I can also use this as a means to document the improvement of each student's work.  This blog can be found at fightingvikingart.blogspot.com .