Dig Deeper into the Mainstays

As the digital aspect of education evolves, specific sites have led their related genres.  Within this blog post, I will be evaluating Twitter, iPiccy, and Symbaloo from the social, creative, and curation genres, respectively.  I chose each site because I have little to no experience with them and wanted to see how they could be used to expand my digital repertoire.

Twitter is one of the mainstream, mainstay mediums of the social networking genre.  According to its website, Twitter is “The fastest, simplest way to stay close to everything you care about” (2013).  In the past, I did sign up for an account, but did not do much after that.  I understand the lingo involved and all that Twitter entails.  I just never really cared to give it a shot, I suppose.  So I must be doing things the slowest, most difficult way.  I digress.  The educational value of Twitter is evident, both for the classroom and for the professional teacher, independently.  My mind automatically thinks about the impact such an application could have when studying government, economics, or other contemporary social studies.  There is also relevance within studying the past.  Students can create accounts for historical, literary, or scientific figures and “bring them into the modern age.”  In my email interview with EricSheninger (@NMHS_Principal) from New Milford High School, he mentioned the importance of establishing Personal Learning Networks and how Twitter helps enable that (E. Sheninger, personal correspondence, October 31, 2013). 

            iPiccy is an online application that I had never heard of before unwrapping Untangling the Web.  I have used Prezi, Glogster, and VoiceThread somewhat extensively, so I wanted to branch out and learn something new.  Unlike Twitter, I had no experience at all with iPiccy, so I signed up for an account.  Wow!  It is impressive in terms of how much it allows its users to manipulate, filter, and edit their own images and it does not require sign up.  Despite my steadfastness to utilizing new technologies, I have to admit that this is one genre in which my skills are stale.  I typically use Power Point to manipulate imagery, but iPiccy is really advanced.  I think that iPiccy definitely has a place within education, but it is not a featured player.  It seems to act more as a supporting role of other applications.

            Symbaloo is an online curation application that allows users to socially bookmark favorite/important websites and other applicable applications.  I have used the site very, very briefly in another Wilkes EDIM course, so I am revisiting it more as a novice/newcomer.  I really like the layout of the site as it reminds me of my smartphone the way it is set up on a grid with application favicons.  As simple as it seems, organizing bookmarks in a graphic manner is what Symbaloo is all about.  It would be a great choice as a default home page in any browser for both student and teacher.  In my research, I came across the Tech Tips for Teachers Blog and found some interesting uses of Symbaloo.  A user of the blog, Jayme Linton (@jaymelinton), posted about how she uses Symbaloo for online fieldtrips and “webmixes” all different sites for students to explore and how engaging it is for students to be able to go somewhere else (digitally) every day (2013).  Embedding Symbaloo into my Google Site is something that I plan on trying out to give students a graphic visualization of the sites that they use and, of course, allow ease of access instead of typing in long URLs.

            Exploring new sites has always been very enjoyable for me.  I love that feeling that I get when my brain goes into overdrive thinking about how I can use a new tool in the classroom.  The three sites previously divulged will definitely give me something new to try and I am excited to do so.

References

Linton, Jayme (October 24, 2013).  Take your students on a virtual fieldtrip everyday.  [Web log comment].  Retrieved from http://techtipsforteachersblog.blogspot.com/?utm_content=bufferb105a&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

Twitter, Inc. (2013).  About Twitter.  Retrieved from https://www.twitter.com/about

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