Technology at Chapin School

The abundance of cool web 2.0 sites can be overwhelming, so I thought I might highlight a useful dozen or so over the next few posts. For those of you unclear as to the meaning of web 2.0, these sites are designed for easy interaction, allowing you to create content on-line.One of the more popular sites is Delicious, a social bookmarking site. At first, I was not that thrilled with delicious, but as I used it more, I began to appreciate it. Here is a slideshow created by Sam Schalman-Bergen for Summercore:

[slideshare id=171995&doc=delicious-1195485905226551-4&w=425]

First off, Delicious is a great place to back up all of your bookmarks; everyone backs up their files, but if you lost your laptop, wouldn’t you be crushed if you lost all your favorites from Internet Explorer or Safari or Firefox. Delicious provides that backup. You can then access your bookmarks(favorites) from any computer. But it is much more than a backup location: it is social bookmarking. So what does social bookmarking mean? First off, it means that you can share your bookmarks (all or just a selected group) with friends, family, colleagues and students. One classroom use of delicious is a group research project, allowing students or you to post good web sites. Students can write descriptions of the web sites they chose as part of a media literacy project.But there is even more. Social bookmarking allows you to view the bookmarks of others, so you can search for a specific topic to see if others have created a useful list, saving you the time.Then there is the advantage of tags. Tags is the web 2.0 word for categories. The advantage to normal saving of bookmarks or favorites within your web browser is that you can easily and quickly add multiple tags to each bookmark. Why is this good? Then you can easily find and sort your bookmarks. For instance, in my browser, I have a category for Web 2.0 sites, but in delicious, I can tag then as Web 2.0 plus education, plus integration, plus graphics, plus video, etc.I am now convinced that delicious is worth the time.

Google is constantly finetuning Google Earth, so each time you open the application and it connects to the GE server, you might find a surprise. The newest features is real weather info, terrific for those of you who do weather units in Science class. The Weather option has three layers: cloud cover in real-time, doppler radar, and weather and temperature conditions. This feature could also be useful at election time; imagine using the weather to predict voter turnout.

I am also constantly finding terrific KML overlays created by other users that can then be integrated into classroom content. My recent finds are one on the Bayeaux Tapestry, one on the spread of the Black Death, and another on population growth throughout the world. Two sites to find these files are The Google Earth Gallery and Google Earth Community Forums.

I worked with one teacher who came up with a great lesson plan for Ancient Egypt. We flew to the Ancient Pyramids and zoomed in on them in 3-D. Then she zoomed out to show the contrast between the desert location of the Pyramids and the fertile Nile Valley and to discuss the rationale for the location of the Pyramids. We then downloaded from the Google Earth Gallery a great KML file on King Tut’s tomb. The best part was that we planned the lesson in one forty minute meeting and she used in for the next class. She was thrilled.