KK+Web+2.0+Tools+Review

Web 2.0 Tool Reviews

[|Hero Machine] This site is used to design your own super hero. I'm not entirely sure what you would use this for or how often you could use it. It's really fun to make and it's very simple to use but I'm not sure how I would apply it in a classroom. All you do is design a character and then you're pretty much done. It might be neat if you could animate it somehow after it's done.

[|The Newspaper Clipping Generator] This site is very simple to use. Just make up a fake newspaper, date, headline, and story and it generates a digital news story. I think this is an awesome tool and I could see it being applied to many different areas. In my Spanish class, for example, students could create fake news stories for what may have been said about different historical events.

__[|Gliffy]__ This is a simple tool for creating diagrams and such like you would on graph paper. We had a computer program like this when I was in high school but it was very complicated to use. This is very simple because you can drag and drop and change things at the click of the button. It's also very versatile since you can use it for a variety of different things, like math problems, floor plans, charts, etc.

[|Dipity] This site lets you create interactive timelines and other gadgets. I think this is a really good tool and could be used for helping students visual important events. Even if they don't need to memorize dates, this program would help them to visualize the order of events. It also lets you view your events on a map by location. This is a great gadget for helping world language students learn about other cultures and visualize world events on a global scale.

[|Toondoo] This site allows you to make your own comic strips and has a variety of options. This is a fun tool and I think kids would really enjoy using it and being creative. I feel like eventually you would have an idea for your cartoon that you couldn't find an image for in their bank. For the purposes of school, though, I think there is plenty for kids to work with. This is also a great tool because it can be used for a variety of different subjects.

__[|BBC Virtual Tours]__ This site has a vitrual tours and videos for a variety of historical topics. I really like the BBC as a learning tool and think they have a lot of great information and intersting ways of showing them. While browsing through the topics, I didn't see any tours on Spanish history, but it would be great to use in history class and would be more interesting than watching a regular video.

[|Zamzar] This website allows you to upload a file in several different formats and then allows you to choose which format you would like it converted to. It is not instant so you wouldn't be able to change something during a class session necessarily, so you'd have to plan ahead. I think it's great that this option is out there, I don't feel like I would use it very often though. Most of the stuff I do would be in the same format, however, there are several possibilities where you could use this tool. For example, if students submitted work in a different format, or if you really wanted to use a resource in class that was in a different format.

__[|4 Teachers]__ This is a general website for teachers with several possible tools to use in your practice. They offer things such as tutorials and outlines that could serve as a starting block. It is a nice sight to gather ideas from and to use as a jumping off point for other ideas, I wouldn't use it to design my entire lesson plan though.

[|Zoomerang] This site allows you to make surveys for free that you can use in your class. This is a handy tool and is very well organized. This would be helpful to use in the classroom so you could get instant feedback on a topic. After a unit is done, you could have a survey ready to get constructive feedback from the students so you can make notes right away for how to tweak this lesson in the future while it is still fresh in your mind.

[|BBC World Languages] This is a great website! I have used this many times myself before this class and I am very happy to see it on here! These are introductory lessons for some popular languages and are structured really well. They have a variety of activities for students to use so that it can reach a diverse crowd of learners. I think as a future Spanish teacher, I would definitely use this for my classes.