3 cloud computing sites
This cloud can be used to engage students more. It empowers
teachers in the classroom. It is generally a smart student response system. This
cloud is called Socrative. It includes a series of educational games and
exercises via smartphones an tablets. While students are trying to answer the
questions, educator manage the questions and games on students’ laptops.
This cloud is very good in need of online study group for a
class. It empowers educators to realize a beneficial and efficient group study
in the classroom. Students can share files, post ideas, collaborate and chat
with video thanks to this cloud. It can be used for teachers, too.
It is very well-designed and well-developed cloud to learn
English as a second language because this cloud includes speech recognition
system. It records your voice. Moreover, it provides instant feedback about
your pronunciation like Rosetta. Except, these features, it has popular videos
that are used for the examples pronunciation and the dialogue. It is great to
be used by ESL teachers.
Diigo
I chose lots of groups related to educational technology to follow. Diigo includes lots of groups that
includes not only cool tools on the web, but also useful resources in education
and technology. Some of my groups I chose to follow are following:
Sites_for_education
Classroom 2.0
EdTech
Education Technology
LearningwithComputers
Technology Integration in Education
Web2.0 at school
I strongly advise all educators the groups to add their group list.
Some of my bookmarks I added are following:
Cloud computing has lots of benefits in education
system. According to Horizon Report 2011, “One of the biggest attractions of
cloud computing is that it is saving schools money and resources.” (Johnson,
Adams, and Haywood, 2011, p.12). To give another example of its benefit, it is
said in the report, “…for example, YouTube and Google docs began making entrances
in schools and fell into a widely accepted pattern of mainstream use. K-12 institutions
were motivated by easy to enable students and faculty to share ideas and
assignments online” (Johnson, Adams, and Haywood, 2011, p.12 )Actually, I think
cloud computing includes benefits of all technology-based tools in the
classroom. In the same report it is alleged that “The reason cloud computing is
so relevant in the near-term horizon is that it has opened doors for more
flexibility, more space, more collaboration, and ultimately, more creative uses
of Internet resources for educators to incorporate in their classrooms (Johnson,
Adams, and Haywood, 2011, p.12). Therefore, I believe cloud computing has a potential
to replace many other web-based technological tools in the classroom in the
near future. There is even a possibility that sophisticated personal cloud will
be used as operating systems in the future, too.
Tag is just a process of naming information/data
through some related short words. As for tag clouds, they are very useful
things to figure out what the cloud is about. In the article named Tag Clouds
Gallery: Examples and Good Practices, Friedman says “… they can
provide visitors with an instant illustration of the main topics, giving a very
specific and precise orientation of the site’s content” (Friedman, 2007, para.1).
Except that, it can be used as a navigation system, too. They are really efficient
way to reach the information in clouds while teaching/learning.
Social bookmarking is . In the video which is about
diigo in vimeo.com , from the link http://vimeo.com/12687333
, one of the Educational Social
Networking is explained, that named Diigo. In this video, we can see some efficient ways to use it in education.
Educators/students can collect and highlight sources and information, then
remember them easily thanks to this Educational Social Networking. It provides to
collect your all sources from bookmarks, docs, notes, sticky notes, and images
altogether. Then, you can bring them together in “your library” in Diigo
server. You can use digital highlight and interactive sticky notes with it. You
can do that just by clicking your Diigo tools in your tool bar in your browser
with your desktop computer, iPad, laptop,
and android. You can get a snapshot and move this to your library in Diigo.
These kinds of social bookmarking are really useful to not be lost in your
resources you collect. It provides all students and teachers to collect and
organize their things in a systematic way. It is easily accessible and sharable
anywhere, too. Wow!
References
Johnson,
L., Adams, S., and Haywood, K. (2011). The
NMC horizon report: 2011 K12 edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media
Consortium. Retrieved from
Friedman, V., (2007). Tag clouds
gallery: examples and good practices. Retrieved from
Oylum,
ReplyDeleteI also browsed Socrative and ThinkBinder for this week's assignments. I can see where Socrative would be quite beneficial for giving and receiving quick feedback and for use with mobile devices. ThinkBinder seems like a good tool for students to collaborate on line in study groups. I briefly reviewed English Central, and see that it incorporates some really unique techniques, like the use of video trailers, to help English Language Learners practice writing and pronunciation skills.
Cloud computing is valuable to schools by permitting them so save resources and money while at the same time providing platforms for sharing and collaboration. It does promote creative uses of the Internet for educational purposes, and we will see the field grow more and more as people and schools seek to find economical, easy, and effective ways to share educational resources and collaborate.
I must admit that I am a bit skeptical about the uses of social bookmarking for education. Diigo offers a great deal of flexibility for users. One of the advantages is the ability to highlight, tag, and organize materials. Another advantage is the ability to use Diigo on a number of different platforms like tablets and Smartphones. I think what we will see more of in the future in education is the increased use of these portable devices, and that is where we will see continued growth in the use of adoption of social bookmarking sites as educational tools.