I see podcasting as another great way to communicate with our “digital natives”. It is not very hard to create a podcast as I recently learned when I created my first podcast for this class.  Truthfully I would like to see more school’s take advantage of this great resource. I learned that you can post your podcasts for free and that students can download them providing they have access to a computer and an ipod or device that plays podcasts and their good to go. It is also a great resource for parents too. Teachers can use it to communicate with parents about what is going on in the classroom and the school. Podcasting is another great way teachers can use technology to enhance their students learning experience.  Especially students with disabilities. I see podcasts as a great benefit for students who miss a lot of school due to illness or have difficulty retaining information. Students can also use  it as a great way to review before assessments. The possibilities go on and on for podcasting. 

I must admit I am not totally sold on the idea of blogging. I see beneficial ways that blogging can be helpful. For example blogging can be a way for teachers to help students find their creative voice. Blogging can also be an effective way to reach “digital natives” who are use to using the computers to do all of their communicating. However just as I talked about in the last post students  usually don’t use these tools as they were meant to be, and although I know that blogging can be a way to actually show students responsible use I am hesitant to introduce something new that may end up doing more harm than good for them.

The benefits of a wiki are plentiful. In my opinion another valuable resource introduced to me as a result of taking this class. Who knew? I guess a lot of people because there are so many out there. I recently came across a wiki page that give info about a restaurant I was considering dining at. I was able to view the different opinions that people had about the restaurant. As an educational tool a wiki can be used in so many ways but the main thing is that students and their parents understand what a wiki is and how they work. One way we can do this is utilizing them for our classroom and explaining to students what they are and how they work. I know that I will.

I have been transformed. Up until now I have never liked Google for several reasons. The main one being when ever I used them as a search engine I did not get good results. Now I am a walking advertisement for Google. I love everything that google has to offer. As I am sure you all could tell especially the free 411 service that Dr. Ransom told us about. I tried it out after class and I love it. Google docs is a great resource and so is Google scholars. I know now the reason that my searches from Google gave me different results than I get from other places. I also have to say that I agree with the saying that when a person does not like a product it is usually because of user error, because that was definitely the case for me. Anybody else agree?