Blogging

Blog #8 Reflection on Blogging

Social Networking has been my favorite new Web 2.0 tool that we have been exposed to this month. One of my favorite sites for referencing and exchanging ideas is Art Education 2.0, Using New Technology in Art Classrooms. http://arted20.ning.com/ It is a Ning creation, so it is powerful enough to host all our visual information, as well as track any link we might wish for. If you teach in the visual arts of any kind, including tech you should join this social network.  I always enjoy the “Current Projects” section where I check out ongoing project ideas to see if anything sparks my own creative juices.  The “Forums” section is excellent, providing solutions and comments to concerns and problems of every sort from elementary to high school and through every corner of the visual art realm.  This site hosts various groups that I can join to get more specific collaboration in my teaching area.  I have noticed that the elementary art group is the largest.  We high school teachers seem to be a little more into the general blogs but you can chat with any of the members. I also like being able to share photos and videos of art related travels, student work, ideas for projects, etc.

Although I first saw this site as a professional development tool, I now see its value in designing lessons that more frequently use other Web 2.0 tools.  I designed my Webquest specifically to use in my painting class to teach art history but also as a connecting discovery project.  I have begun sharing my Glacier High School Netvibes page with colleagues and will make it available soon to my students as well.  We have set up a shared Google Calender for the students and teachers in our entire school district art department to keep up with assignments and upcoming projects and activities.  A colleague and I recently team taught an in-service on Web 2.0 in our school district using this simple jottit page to help them connect with the links we were covering. It worked seamlessly!

http://digitalteaching.jottit.com/ You will find a couple of new links here that I thought were great fun to use in the classroom for presentation and research purposes:
 Prezi.com, http://prezi.com/128698/view/#34
 World Digital Library, http://www.wdl.org/en/