The 3 Cloud Computing Sites that I found in Assignment 3.1 were:
1. Curriculet: I could see how Curriculet could be a valuable resource to gain access to books by creating a virtual library. Curriculet is basically a web portal where a teacher can log in to one dashboard that could contain all reading materials. Teachers can upload content to the site and have
students access it for free. Teachers also have the ability to rent or buy new books, magazines or newspaper articles and save them in their Library. Whatever reading material is saved in the Virtual library is accessible by all the student within the class. The major benefit this brings to teachers is that now they can find the resources they need instantly in digital format without having to wait for books to be shipped in, and they can also rent books for a very low cost that they would otherwise have to purchase. It is free to sign up for an account as long as you are a teacher.
Once the teacher has the resources available, the teacher can create assignments and students can work on them within Curriculet. Once the students and teachers are connected in a classroom, the teacher has the ability to post real time comments to the students work as the student is writing a paper or taking a quiz. This allows for instant feedback so students can make corrections instantly.
2. Google Classroom: Google Classroom may be the most powerful Ed. Tech tool that is out there today. Google is a Giant in the tech world and has found a way to make networking and sharing easy to use for just about anybody with an internet connection. Now Google allows teachers to create Virtual Classrooms. This allows teachers to basically manage everything they do in one online classroom. This doesn't necessarily mean that the class needs to be taught online. Traditional classrooms can certainly use Google Classrooms as well as online courses. Google Classroom provides a platform for teachers to be able to post assignments, helpful videos, comments. grades, files, etc.... Students are also able to leverage all of the other features that Google Apps offer because everything that is a part of Google Apps, integrates within Google Classroom. For example, students can share their calendars with each other. Or students can share essays with other students and teachers. Students can work in the same file at the same time. This makes project collaboration a breeze. Instead of having one file passed around via email, now multiple students can work within the same document at the same time and Google continually saves the changes so you never lose the work.
3. Quizalize: Quizalize allows teachers to quiz or test students instantly and see their answers instantly. This is a wonderful cloud based utility that teachers can use to assess the learning of their students in real time. If a student is taking a quiz and struggling, the teacher can see that while the quiz is taking place and intervene to help the student. Quizalize can be used from any device that has an internet connection. In addition to giving teachers the ability to create their own tests and quizzes, Quizalize has an extensive library of quizzes for teachers to use. Some of these quizzes cost money but others are free. With Quizalise student will not have to wait until the next day to find out how they did on a test. Rather, they can find out as soon as they submit their answer. This is a very powerful tool with a lot of flexibility that teachers of all grades could leverage.
Social Bookmarking
Here is a link to my PearTrees Account: http://www.pearltrees.com/mkoop03
Social Bookmarking is a new topic for me. Although I have heard the name before, I have never taken advantage of it. After doing some research, I now see how Social Bookmarking can be a great resource to locate relevant information quickly. I have always bookmarked sites that I frequent often. In fact, for all of my sales presentation, I create a new bookmarked link and save the presentation so that when I need to give the presentation, all I need to do is click on the bookmark in the browser. The "Social" part of social bookmarking was the part that was new to me. With Pearl Tree and Delicious, as just two examples, users can not only save the information that they like or frequently access, but they can share that with their friends or the community. When a user sets up a bookmark , the user can create tags. These tags should be key words that reference the site in some way. For example, my soccer camp website is bookmarked. I created the tags, "soccer", "camps", and "FrogTown." I used FrogTown because that is the name of the camp. In the future if I need to locate that site among my bookmarks, I can search by anyone of those tags for the site to pop up. The benefit of Social bookmarking is now, others could search for those same tags and my site would come up as an option. This may be a good way to promote my camp next year! :)
In summary, my takeaways from this week's class is that there are a plethora of options out there for teachers to leverage because of the cloud, tags, tag clouds, and social bookmarking. "One of the biggest benefits of cloud computing is that it is saving schools money and resources. After email and other infrastructure applications have been moved to the cloud, they no longer require much
development intervention or extra expense." (Johnson, 2011, p. 10) To me, this means using the cloud as a resource is a no-brainer. I can remember early on when the cloud first became a buzzword, people were resistant to adopt. However, now with all the resources it offers and the cost savings, schools need to get on board. Once they are using the cloud, this opens them up to so much more. Sometimes it is so much information that it can be tough to manage. That is where tags and social bookmarking can play a huge part. Applying tags and using a cloud based social bookmarking site can provide teachers and students with a wealth of relevant resources to share with each other. Student can create tag clouds. These tag clouds serve as a hodge-podge of relevant words like the one above. I used the University of Toledo's Ed. Tech page to create my Tag Cloud. This gives viewers a very quick image of all everything that is entailed within the Ed. Tech program at the University. I did not have to write a long essay describing the Ed. Tech program, but rather created a word cloud. The tags within this word cloud could help users find relevant information within a website, almost serving as the navigational piece of a site.. However, the tags "shouldn’t replace the “common” navigation but support it giving users additional clues about the content of the site." (Friedman 2007) All of this allows us to share what we are learning with each other. Traditionally it was always taught to not look at your neighbors work. That was considered cheating. However, I believe that what we are learning now is that when we embrace collaboration instead of resist it, students will learn from each other creating the opportunity for true development.
