Week 5 Thing #12 & Thing # 13

  Wiki 

  Looking at some of the examples of wikis one of the things I liked was that teachers posted assignments on the wiki.  I think this would be useful because in the art room we typically go over a project during one class but continue to work on it for more than one class.  It would be useful to give students the oppotunity to on and look at the assignment during their worktime  when they are ready instead of re-explaining the assignment every class time because it uses up a lot of time that students could spend working. Students would also be able to interact and ask questions using the wiki.  I think it would also be a useful tool to share assignments with parents. 
  
     Wikis are also a great tool for professional collaboration.  I am currently involved in a wiki that other art teachers I went to school with collaborate on.  We can share lessons and ideas using this tool.  It is great to have other perspectives because other teachers may think of obstacles or extensions that I may not have.

Google Docs

This application is interesting because it is basically an online document.  It has many of the same tools that Microsoft Word has.  There are multiple types of documents that you can work in also which is nice such as word documents, spreadsheets, even drawings.  It is also interesting to work in collaboration on the word documents.  It is similar to a wiki in that more than one person can edit on your work if you allow it, so you could create something collaboratively or even have someone edit things in your document for you.

Week 4 Thing 10 and 11

   There is quite a lot to explore on Diigo.  I think that this tool could be used for helping students explore web pages or doing research on assigned web pages.  You could easily place questions for students to think about within the text using the post its.  You could also draw student's attention to something you really want them to focus on by highlighting it. 
   This is a great networking tool for teachers because you can follow people.  So you can see what teachers in your same content area are researching and where they are researching.  This could be a very useful tool in the classroom and can really help you to organize your information so you do not have to go back to multiple pages looking for one fact.

  Wordle and Tagxedo would be great tools to use when teaching students to describe art work.  I made a word cloud in wordle that used texture words.  I made a word cloud in tagxedo that used the Colorado Art Standards as written on the CAEA website.  These are great creative ways to display writing and would be great for list poems.

Tagxedo with Colorado Art Standards

Wordle About Texture