This is the Wordle that I created at wordle.net. My daughter has been a fan of this site and Tagxedo, also, since she used them in a class last year. It is a very neat tool. I know lots of teachers use them as a product students can create to show their understanding of something they have read.
As a part of the work for this class, I have learned a lot about the behind-the-scenes working of the Internet in general and of Web 2.0 in particular. I feel much more comfortable now with many of the tools that we have used in this class. I have used Facebook and YouTube for many years, but I am now addicted to Twitter both personally and professionally. I am using Delicious constantly at home and at school to keep up with websites I want to remember and return to. At the same time that we learned about Delicious, I was introduced to Symbaloo which I have actually in my classroom along with the blog that I created for one of my classes. The blog-Symbaloo combo came in especially handy when I had to be out of my classroom for two days this semester. I am still slow in using my RSS aggregator to keep up with feeds, but I am still working to figure out ways to make it more user friendly for me. With the recent iOS update on my iPhone, there have been changes in where different applications are located. Some of these changes have to do with the inter-connectivity of some Web 2.0 applications and platforms. As I notice these and other changes, they make more sense to me know that I understand the whole system much better than before.
I have found that most of the tools that we have learned about are proving useful for me professionally and personally. I am working on integrating them into my classroom, and doing that always takes more time for me. My students always respond positively to things that I try if I am thoroughly familiar with them myself and know exactly what I want the students to do. That level of preparation takes time, and I am working on it now. I find myself thinking more and more about how I could improve my lessons by incorporating more Web 2.0 technologies.
