Technology in the Education Arena

For the last few months, I have been taking a course entitled “Social Software: Virtual Tools for Your Classroom” for credit through Framingham State College. We are focusing on Web 2.0 tools – RSS, Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts. Although I had a background in all of these tools, I learned a lot from taking this course, met many nice teachers, was able to take the course with my new colleague Nancy, and was able to watch and learn as all these teachers created blogs, wikis, and podcasts. There were many teachers who had no background in these tools and they all worked so hard, put their ideas to work, and came up with really great resources. Their podcasts were wonderful.

As my final project, I chose to work on something different – Second Life. I have been investigating Second Life since August when I was hired by Plymouth Public Schools and found out they are one of four school districts collaborating on an island together in Second Life. I have been diligently working in Second Life learning to walk, dress, edit my appearance, build (very limited), edit objects, shop, find out about educational places, go to sessions being given by educational organizations in Second Life, and next I will be learning about presenting in Second Life. Beth Knittle, Barnstable Public Schools, and myself have been offering workshops in Second Life as part of Lighthouse Learning Island.

In an effort to help “newbies” in Second Life, I created a wiki page focusing on Second Life and included a movie I created entitled – Second Life, Oh the Places You Can Go. This movie contains screen shots of educational (and some fun) places in Second Life you can visit. I put the name of the educational site on the screen shot to allow users to search in Second Life for the location.

In closing, I have enjoyed my class and learned quite a bit.