Educational Blogs

Blogs are a great tool for educators to use. There are many ways that blogs can be used in education, but one useful way is for teachers to have a class blog for their students. It may be useful because teachers can post things for their class, and if a student is absent for example, they know what went on that day and what they need to catch up on. There are many ways teachers can use blogs, but it is for them to decide the way they want to use it.
Blogs are also useful for teachers to read insightful blogs that other educators have written. I have learned so much about being a future teacher by reading experienced teachers blogs. There is great incite on teaching in blogs. They can also be a useful communicator between the teacher and the students. Blogs could be a way the teacher accepts feedback on, for example, a reading assignment. Blogs are a great tool to use in education, for teachers as well as students.

iGoogle

iGoogle is a fantastic tool that I recently learned about. I have since created an iGoogle page and I love it! iGoogle is extremely useful for busy people because it lays out everything in a quick to read format. Once you sign in into your iGoogle page, you set it up exactly to your specifications. You can have the local news, weather, educational blogs, inspirational quotes, whatever you want on your page. It is all right at your fingertips. It definitely saves a lot of time. You can subscribe to blogs and it will feed the blog updates right to your iGoogle page. I believe it is a great tool to save busy teachers a lot of time, while keeping them updated with educational blogs, news, and anything else they want. iGoogle is a fantastic tool for educators to use.

Twitter in education

When Twitter first came out, I thought it was absolutely crazy. I joined to see what all the fuss was about, but I only followed celebrities because those were the only people I knew who were on Twitter, and it was interesting to see what was going on in their everyday life. I love celebrity news, and I soon found it addicting.
I really saw no use for Twitter in education until recently. A friend told me she was following a few interesting educators, such as Ken Robinson. I had just watch a great educational video by Ken and thought it would be great to see how he used Twitter. I have learned there is an entire other side to Twitter that I never knew before. Educators are using Twitter to collaborate on ideas about education. I think it is great to be able to collaborate with others in an atmosphere like Twitter where Tweets can only be short little blurbs. I think it is easy for people to follow short blurbs such as Tweets. I am so glad that I now realize how Twitter can be extremely useful educational tool.

Video in education

I believe using educational videos to teach students is fantastic! I have learned so much about education through the use of videos. For example, if a teacher is teaching a unit on Rome, she could Google "educational videos on Rome" and come up with many choices to choose from. I absolutely love using videos in education. I am definitely a visual learner, so to be able to see things instead of simply reading about them in a book helps me to learn the material so much quicker. Students can also take the initiative to watch educational videos on something they are learning at school, to help them understand it more. I think videos are a great educational tool for teachers as well as students.

Google Docs

I believe Google Docs is a fantastic teaching tool. It is great for teachers as well as students and the best part about using Google Docs, is it is completely FREE! It is like a built in flashdrive, it stores documents in your Google account and the documents can be pulled up on any computer with internet access. It is also extremely convient when doing group projects because you can attach collaborators who can all see the document you are working on, and the same document can be updated by each collaborator. Google Docs is such a great tool that I believe I will always use, as a student and a future teacher.