Inquiry Project Proposal

Rational and Personal Goals

Why learn about Web 2.0 tools?  Why experiment with new ideas?  Why move out of our comfort zone?  These are all questions that we Web 2.0 novices ask ourselves.  The answers to the proceeding questions are that we need to be relevant to our students.  Our students spend at least part of their days on an online virtual world, we need to understand it and be able to navigate in it as well.  I believe that experimentation leads to knowledge, which is my goal for this inquiry project.  I hope to gain enough knowledge through experimentation to help my current students in grade 4 and possibly my future students in the areas of high school social studies and English, and elementary and secondary library.  I feel that I would be classified between a novice and an intermediate in my technology ‘comfort level’.  I have a Facebook account, blogged in previous classes, used Google Docs, but still feel a bit uneasy about trying out new tech tools.  The six Web 2.0 skills that I plan to explore this term are varied in skill level as a choice to push me beyond my comfort zone.  I ask my students to take chances and try things that may be new and different to them; I think that I should have to as well.

I have chosen six different Web 2.0 tools that fall in the realm of novice ,intermediate and advanced skills.  During my exploration of these tools I plan to look at them with hoping to understand how I may be able to use them myself in my educational and personal life and there applications to my students lives.  I hope that I will be able to convey this new knowledge to my students in that they too can use this technology in their own lives.  Finally, I want to be able to demonstrate my new knowledge to my colleges and maybe have them try them out.

·         Glogster :  While I used Glogster in my Autobiography of a Tech User and Creator, I believe that I could do a better job experimenting with this tool  I really want to use this tool with my grade 4 class around the topic of polar bears.

·         Survey Monkey: I want to use a survey program for helping my students study for a quiz.  I plan on making up a multiple choice survey on a subject we are studying and then have they try it out in the computer lab.

·         Jog the Web:  This is a program that I would like to try out and then show it off to my fellow teachers at school as a way to follow and organize the web pages that they follow.

·         Prezi:  I saw some of the other Autobiography of a Tech User and Creator projects that my fellow classmates made and was inspired to experiment with this tool.  This is an application that I would experiment with at a higher grade level and would use it as a presentation tool.. I plan on experimenting with this tool to learn from it and apply it to a possible future classroom.

·         http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ or Comic Life:  My district has a license for Comic Life and I would love to have the opportunity to work with it in my classroom.  If I can’t get all of my students working on comic life I plan on using http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ to create funny fairy tales as part of my fiction unit.

·         Bloggster:  I plan on setting up a fictional library blog for my future library.  I have experimented with a blog once before in a previous course I am by no ways an expert.  I would like to set up a blog that I would update new books, post important links, give research advice, among other important library tools that could be used.  This will be my last tool because I’m hoping to add some of the other Web 2.0 tools that I’ve learned about onto the blog.

Timeline

·         Week of Jan. 30. - Feb. 3. Inquiry Proposal

·         Week of Feb 13-17 Tool 1

·         Week of Feb 20-24 Tool 2, Tool 3

·         Week of March 5-9 Tool 4

·         Week of March 19-23 Tool 5, Tool 6

·         Week of March 26-30 Blog finalized

·         Week of April 2-5 Inquiry Project Final Reflection.