Post #5 Web 2.0, LibraryThing and MOOCS

The Web 2.0 technologies that I think would be useful in a classroom are YouTube and blogs, at least for a classroom that I would be teaching. I would like to teach younger kids so I do not think that Wiki or Diigo would be too beneficial for them because I think they are just too young to comprehend those sites. But I do think a class blog would help me stay organized with all the information that I would like to send out to parents.

I think YouTube would be a great site for me and my students because I think being able to show my students a visual representation of what I am teaching would be very beneficial for their learning development. As the podcast stats, YouTube is a great tool for these students to learn because of the various amounts of information and videos.

An interesting tool that I could use in my classroom would be LibraryThing. Growing up, I loved to read books and would be transported to another world when I dove into a great book. I think the power of a good book can really help teach a student, so I think LibraryThing would be a great site for them.

This site allows for someone to create an online catalog of books with books that they own, have read, books they'd like to own and books they've rented out. They can also place tags, ratings and reviews on each book and contribute to online forums through the site.
https://www.librarything.com/

I believe that the technology advancement in chapter 12 that holds the biggest promise for education would be MOOCS. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses and they are large-scale, open-access, online learning opportunities that are free. These courses are designed to teach students who want to learn around a subject area and want to do so online.

These communities enroll thousands of students and some of the institutes that facilitate these include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. I think this technology is incredibly beneficial for students who may not have the opportunity to enroll in an institution or pay tuition. I think this gives those students an opportunity that they did not have before these courses were formed.