Final Reflection

All in all, this course was quite interesting. Although I thought that perhaps a bit too much time was spent on each topic/tool that we covered, I did enjoy learning about web 2.0 tools, and there were definitely some new tricks I got about the tools with which I was already familiar. I especially liked the interactive spreadsheet project and the movie-making (the movie-making mostly because I've done it before professionally and it was fun to look at again).

Website

Although at the beginning of the course the website I designed seemed like a massive project, looking back on it makes me think that I made a mountain out of a molehill. The hardest part by far was the accumulation and annotation of the resource page, and in the end that probably only took about two hours to complete.
I'm not sure if I'd like to do an entire website in my classroom--for the most part, I think a blog would probably  be enough for my purposes. I'm a very hands-on person, and I sometimes find websites a bit impersonal, even if they are generally only for reference.

iMovie

Truth be told, this title is something of a misnomer, since I actually used Windows Live Movie Maker to complete this project--what can I say? I'm a PC through and through. I've made videos similar to this one before, but it's not my favorite format for relaying information. I'd rather have a discussion that play a movie any day; if I'd had videos to share of touring Italy, then I would likely have thought this exercise more useful, but as it was, I'm fairly pleased with the outcome.
The video I've created is a sample of what I might show a class I was hoping to take on a senior trip overseas. Enjoy.

Storybird

Although it was my own assigned web 2.0 tool, Storybird was by far my favorite. I love the idea of fostering creativity in my classroom, and Storybird is definitely conducive to this activity. I would find it especially useful in teaching my classes to translate from English to Latin, since students can sometimes get so caught up in the mechanics that they forget the story--to be able to separate the assignment into one-page sentences would probably help students to stay focused on both the Latin and the story itself.

Google Forms

After looking over the wiki about Google forms and creating my own, I've decided I'm absolutely in love with this tool. I always dread the amount of papers I expect I'll have to have students fill out for class, but if I can make all of mine on the computer, then I won't have to worry about loads of physical files or all the trees I'm killing. The only drawback I can see to forms is the fact that if I want them to fill something out at home, they might not have internet access, which would put a damper on things. Still, I find that scenario somewhat unlikely, and I'm hoping that if any students do have that problem, then I can let them fill out my forms at school. View the form I made here.

Inspiration

My Inspiration experience was an interesting one. I definitely think that it's a useful classroom tool, and teachers should be versed in how to use it, but I'm not sure how I can use it efficiently in my classes. As you can see from the example I created above, classical studies is a bit more complicated than your average unit of study. That was the simplest web I could think of, and it's not even complete! I had to leave out several major gods simply because there wasn't room for them on the chart. And when I start to think of the Julio-Claudian family tree, the mind boggles. Grammar isn't much better--there are four conjugations, five declensions, and so many odd adjective forms that it makes seasoned Latinists want to scream. I fear that an Inspiration chart on any of these topics would be more likely to make students crazy than actually help them.

PodBean

PodBean could potentially be a great advantage for a foreign language class, even in Latin, where pronunciation isn't necessarily a priority. The ability to hear and translate Latin is just as important as the ability to see and translate Latin at the university level, and starting a student on spoken translation as soon as possible would place him or her at a great advantage. I could also have a class make podcasts of their reading for the week to check on their progress in learning to pronounce, which would also be to their advantage. I can't think of a lot more uses for it in a Latin class, since most of what we do is light in conversation and heavy in written work, but those two options would be enough in themselves.

Digital Scavenger Hunt

Picasa Slideshow

Picnik and Smilebox

Picknik is likely to be a 2.0 tool that I use a great deal, both personally and in the classroom. I really like to have a good photo-editing tool, and while the Windows version isn't terrible, it doesn't hold a candle to Picnik. The ability to spice up a photo can be essential for a class, especially for teachers using simple Powerpoints or other basic tools that might not be particularly stimulating visually.

Smilebox, meanwhile, isn't quite my thing. Although I might find the invitation, newsletter, and greeting templates fairly useful, I prefer to let photos speak for themselves most of the time, and I very much prefer physical representations of photo albums and scrapbooks to digital ones. I might assign my students a newsletter format presentation, for example, but I feel that I would be unlikely to use it regularly in the classroom.

Wordle and Timetoast

Wordle is an amazing tool for finding themes and major characters in a writing sample. If I were an English teacher, I would have my students use this tool all the time. And although I could theoretically use Wordle with Latin classes, I noticed a potential problem when I pasted some Latin text into the creator box. Latin words actually change spelling based on where they're placed in a sentence--nouns and adjectives change form when they change case. When I created my Latin Wordle based on a sample from the Latin historian Tacitus, I saw the name of the same barbarian king listed several times as key words, simply in different forms. So although I could still probably use this tool for simpler Latin sentences, as soon as I get into subordinate clauses and the like, the Wordle would probably be too cluttered with different cases of the same word.

I've found myself extremely disappointed in Timetoast, a tool that I thought I could use a great deal in the classroom. Since a large part of Latin literature depends on a knowledge of Roman history, I was hoping that my class could create timelines about major events in the periods that we read about. Unfortunately, though, Timetoast does not allow users to post events that fall between 100 BCE and 100 CE, which is a major time of change in the Roman world. Again, I'm extremely put out by this turn of events, because I absolutely love the idea of this tool. Hopefully, though, I may be able to find a similar one that works better.

Delicious and Glogster

Before Firefox decided to stop supporting the Google toolbar, I used Google bookmarks religiously. My ability to access my bookmarks from any computer was a real plus. As far as I can tell, Delicious is almost exactly the same, except that a lot of websites have a Delicious link so that people don't even have to go to the trouble of the major bookmark organization process immediately. Even better is the ability to follow others' stacks. Now I don't have to build a bunch of categories on my own; I can use the stacks of other Delicious users to help me! I think I can definitely say that Delicious will be one of my new homepages.

Glogster, I have to say, didn't impress me as much. Although the look of Glogs may be more original than that of traditional blogs, there isn't much appeal for me in the blogging tools in general (and I do realize the irony of this). I can say, however, that if I should assign my students a project that would require a presentation tool, I will think of Glogster. The format would likely be very appealing for high school students, and if this medium is more likely to engage them in their work, I'm all for it.

Latin WebQuest

There seems to be quite a scarcity of Latin WebQuests online, but luckily Latin classes include a great deal of emphasis on history, mythology, and archaeology. One of the better WebQuests on archaeology is available from a Kentucky-based distance learning company. Although the use of higher-order thinking is not essential to this project, students are constantly having to gather and apply information on the project and communicate effectively with members of their community.
The project is designed to make students consider the ruins of yesterday and how buildings today might share some similarities with these ruins. At the same time, the WebQuest familiarizes students with several recently excavated archaeology sites. 

A Site for Site Evaluation (It's very meta)

The Discovery website has excellent resources for educators, and one of these exceptional resources is Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators. This site provides worksheets for educators to hand to their students (or use themselves) in evaluating different types of websites. This page even breaks down into evaluation rubrics for different grade levels (there are rubrics for elementary, middle, and high school students).

Website Evaluation

I definitely do not recommend this website. Although it was meant for use in a K12 classroom, the layout of the site is so unappealing that students would likely dislike having to use it. The site could be useful as a quick reference for students who do not have a dictionary handy or who want to clarify who a certain mythical or historical figure is, but the information is often less detailed than that which can be found on Wikipedia, and there are far more useful Latin dictionaries which can be found online. This site might be useful for a major project, as it would allow students to use one source rather than skip around the internet trying to find multiple types of information; however, the best thing that could be said for the site is the teacher resources in the form of sample lesson plans and worksheets. Still, these worksheets are fairly uninspired and do not follow any particular companion text, so they would be inconvenient for beginner classes.


Before this exercise, I really hadn't thought about how important that it be that a website have a specific author. I had realized this abstractly, I suppose--we know not to trust Wikipedia very far due to the virtually limitless number of authors a page might have. Still, it hadn't occurred to me to apply this principle to other sites. The questions about the layout of the site also got me thinking about what would be appealing to my students in the classroom. In the end, the design of website will have a lot to do with how engaged they are in learning the material presented to them on a particular site.

Wikis

I've found most new technologies fairly intuitive, given that we've had a computer with internet access since I was about five years old. Wikis are turning out to be no exception. Working within a format so similar to the Word application has allowed me to complete my assignment with almost no problems. I did have a little trouble inserting images at first, but once the issue of that awkwardly placed toolbar was resolved, I was sailing smoothly.

Internet Terminology

While I had realized before I began this class that there was a specific language set used for internet phenomena, I had no idea that there were so many terms I didn't know. Boolean operators, wildcards, modifiers...these are words I have never had to consider in relation to search engines, but apparently they are the technical names for symbols I've been using in Google since the beginning of my surf days.
It's likely a failing of the majority of my generation that we can operate a great deal of modern technology intuitively, but we have no idea how to talk about it professionally. For example, I have taught myself how to write HTML code, but I have no idea what words to use when I'm describing what I've done. In this way, at least, I will find this course very helpful, so that when I actually wish to discuss the Internet with someone, I will sound like the fairly well educated person that I am.

Introduction to the Class

I am from Bartlett, TN (a suburb of Memphis), and I went to Bartlett High School. I want to teach high school Latin because I think that all knowledge is precious (even the knowledge of a dead language) and ought to be passed on. I enjoy exploring media in all forms, and I love discovering new things in Knoxville. I am primarily a PC user, although I’m familiar with several types of operating systems.