It seems like just yesterday that I researched Web 2.0, found little or nothing, and crossed it off my list as being insignificant. I was absolutely amazed at all of the tools available when I looked at the assigned site.
As a middle school teacher, concentrating on teaching one single subject area for years, I find that I have missed out on so much technology. Last year I was asked to Co-teach with three other teachers. In this new position, I had time to observe students while they learning. Most of the students were not engaged in class and a large number of the students did little or no homework. As a result of these observations, I started looking for ways to interest the students in learning, offering suggestions to the content area teacher, and in the end I had very little success in making changes.
I will be bringing Web 2.0 tools into the two sixth grade math classes that I am teaching. Since math is a critical area we do not have the freedom to decide what we teach and when we teach the content, but we are free to decide how to teach.
The first tool I want to introduce is classroom Demonstrations from the Wolfram Demonstrations Project. I plan to introduce students to new math concepts using the classroom interactive whiteboard; then take them to the computer lab to work with the demonstration. When it is not possible to go to the lab students may access the demonstrations on the two classroom computers. They may also download the player and work on demonstrations at home. The Wolfram Demonstrations Project is available at http://www.wolfram.com/edu/ and the player can be accessed at http://www.wolfram.com/products/player/download.cgi.
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