Web 2.0 blog

I know it's later than 8:00 but it's been a very busy day.  Just got home from school around 8 as we are rehearsing for a Murder Mystery that our 8th graders are performing for the next two nights.  I have no voice but I do love my job:)  Anyway...Web 2.0.  I will admit, like many of you have as well, that I was using Web 2.0 sites without knowing that that's what they were.  In trying to find out exactly what it meant to be a Web 2.0 site, I did discover some new cool sites.  One is called Little Bird Tales.  It's a site where children can share stories they've written, pictures they've drawn and other creative accomplishments.  You can log on as a teacher, parent or child and submit work or view work by other children.  Much of the work posted is posted by teachers of some of their students' projects.  One project I saw was a digital book narrated by the students.  It presented itself like a slide show but the pictures were original drawings.  You can post your work for public viewing or share it with select people who are also members of the site.  I'm excited to look further into it.  For now, I have opened an account.  Another cool site that I've already used quite a bit (including in my recent lesson plan assignment) is Wordle.  I love Wordle.  It's a web site where you can enter any text and it makes that text into word clouds or collages arranging the words in a bunch of different designs, layouts and colors.  The most common ideas in the text are the biggest words in the collage.  It's a great tool for teaching in so many ways.  It's great for reviews, book reports, poems, song writing, reaction pieces and so much more.  I hope that I've shined a little light for someone today.  I'm still digging through the "gold" of the top 100 Web 2.0 sites.  There are a lot of neat music sites that I can't wait to check out...but not tonight.  Good night everyone ;)