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My Web 2.0 tool kit for struggling or reluctant readers and writers
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Blogging in and out of the Classroom, Computers In The Classroom, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, motivating students, Special Education, underachieving students, Web 2.0 tools and technologies
There are lots of reasons why kids are reluctant to read and write- learning disabilities, competition from other activities, lack of interest, school not valued. Students have told me they don’t read and write outside of school. Of course they do. They just don’t realize it. They really need to make a paradigm shift and realize that when they text message, email, surf the net or are on YouTube they are reading and writing all the time. Students are very comfortable online. Lets use that to our advantage when trying to engage struggling and reluctant students.
Good pedagogy states that we should start where our students are. Where are our students? The BBC reported that today the average kid spends 44.5 hours a week on-line. Imagine. I could hardly believe that, but when I asked my students about it they thought if you included playing games that statistic wouldn’t be out of line. I’m sorry I didn’t think to bookmark the BBC article. At the time, I was so shocked and now I can’t find the original article to share it with you. Even if that stat is a bit high, we know that kids spend hours and hours online. That’s for sure.
I’m always looking for ways to engage my “at-risk” students so when I discovered the power of the Web 2.0 and all the resources out there, I slowly started to use what I found and developed what I call my Web 2.0 tool kit.
The following presentation is one that I did last Saturday at the Reading Connection Conference at OISE. While some of the slides might not make sense since you aren’t hearing the presentation, I’ve included my Web 2.0 tool kit and that should be helpful- at least I hope it’s helpful. I’ve included links to each tool.
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6 Responses to “My Web 2.0 tool kit for struggling or reluctant readers and writers”
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What another great article.
Thanks.
I RT your tweet about this today.
Chris,
I’m delighted that you enjoyed this post and thank you for RT it. I’m honoured that you think the post merits RTing. In future posts, I’m going to give examples of how I use each of the tools in my classroom and even include a rubric for marking the assignments. I think I’ll start with my class blog. I’ve learned a lot from my kids about what a class blog for “at-risk” shoud be. I hope you enjoy those posts as well.
I am so out of touch… thanks for the toolkit. Fabulous resource. I have a lot of work to do.
Jenn,
Thanks. Don’t think you have to do it all at once. Have fun.
Wow, nice work, Elona! So impressive that you spoke at OISE, and even more impressive that you have used all these tools in your classroom. About Animoto: did each of your students create their own account, or did you set up a class account?
Thank you!
Sukhdeep,
Why thank you. It was exciting to speak at the conference. Everyone ws so nice and made me feel so welcome.
As for Animoto, the kids were so excited about Animoto they went online and did it on their own before I got a chance to set things up. Some of the kids even created more at home. They loved it. My students are in grade 12 so they are really at home online. If you are using Animoto with younger kids, I’d
tell them before hand that we have a class account.
I haven’t found anything objectionable on the site yet, but I think if something came up I would use it as an opportunity to talk about what is appropriate and why that particular piece wasn’t. I trust the ed. site more than the public site.