Week 3: Social Networking Reflection

How will these tools help me communicate with my students? These tools are great with communicating with my students. By allowing my students to interact with these tools, they will get a greater understanding of the material because they will be engaging with it instead of taking notes while I lecture. They will be open to exploring the tools and having fun while learning. I feel that when students are engaged in the learning process, they retain much more information because they are excited about it.
How will these tools help me communicate with my students' parents? I think that, with the parents, I could communicate with them through the students. As homework assignments, I could instruct the students to go home and give their parents a tour of the tool. If it is a virtual tour, the students would act as a tour guide. If it was something else, the students would show the parents around the tool so they knew what we were learning in class.
How will these tools help me communicate with my colleagues? I could collaborate with my colleagues about different tools I've come across that have and that haven't worked. It's always great to talk with other teachers and share ideas, and with these tools, I can share with the other teachers the tools that I think are great for the classroom.
In which ways might I employ these tools to achieve classroom objectives? All I'd have to do is take a look at the objectives and find a tool that fulfills that objective. For example, if one of my objectives was about learning about Egyptian tombs, I could find a tool that was possibly a 3-D exploration through an ancient tomb. That way, the students could use the tool to explore the tomb by themselves instead of me lecturing about the tombs. The students are able to search for the objectives on their own as long as I provide them with the tool to fulfill that objective.
What are the pros and cons of the tools? Some pros of the tools are that they are engaging in learning. If the students are engaging in the learning process, they are more excited about learning and can explore information using the tool on their own without being bored. Also, (as long as the students stay on task) it is harder to get off task with the tools because the students are so curious and involved in learning. However, if the students were doing something other than learning through the tools, they may daydream or do other things that would take them off task. Some cons of the tools is, of course, some students may not have computers at home or have the knowledge of how to use computers. Also, for those students that would need accommodations in learning, it would be difficult to incorporate the same sense of the tools into something that didn't involve technology (if that student needing accommodations couldn't read/see/etc.).