Reflections on web 2.0 tools

Reflections by Mak Koon Wing Kenneth:

At first glance, blog is so funny and I think it is difficult to do. But creating a personal blog is fun. When I see my own blog, I feel a sense of ownership and achievement as long as my blog remains functional.

The integration of different web 2.0 tools into the blog allows for educational purposes. The whole blog can centre around a main theme. Here are some tools that I like most.

Youtube and TeacherTube are useful whenever teachers want to incorporate certain videos related to the curriculum into their teaching activities.

The Slideshare helps teachers to distribute the Powerpoint online through the web and students take pride in presenting their Powerpoint materials via the web by Slideshare.

The Mindmeister helps to create mind maps so that students can construct knowledge together in an interactive online environment. Students learn in a collaborative way so that the zone of proximal development can be extended in an interactive learning environment.

Delicious helps collect web links useful for students and teachers to share information and web pages by forming a community of practice. It is fun to decide bookmarks of my own. It is informative to allow students to check others' bookmarks to facilitate smooth transmission of information throught the web.

The Zoho Writer is useful whenever students want to edit passages together. It seems particularly useful in English writing so that students can construct knowledge by writing articles in groups.

The RSS feeds keep me informed and updated of latest events. We don't need to go the website to check whether certain websites are updated or not, which is very convenient.

Podcasts allow me to present my voice over the internet. I yearn to incorporate all these into my teaching practices.

In short, I like using blog and web 2.0 tools to organize my portfolio since their potentials for education are high. I think the blog is presentable and beautiful, which elates and excites me. Students like to learn via creation of blogs too. Many teaching and learning materials can be delivered to students via blogs so as to make a learning curriculum beyond textbook-based level. The blog makes promotion of new books and gathering of feedback from students possible. With the implementation of liberal studies as a new subject in the new senior secondary curriculum, webtool 2.o technology can surely enable students to share information and construct knowledge together so that the culture of "learning to learn" can be fostered and cultivated.

More reflections by Yan Chit Wang:

This is our very good experience. We can learn so much about how to combine different media including texts, photos, movies, music into one piece and integrate all these into the internet.

We can respond through the blog so that we can learn how other people think. We can communicate by effective methods. In the future, it will be a very powerful method to improve our teaching skills.