At our last professional development, focused on technology, Rabbi Tavi Koslowe shared some of his favorite Web 2.0 tools.  You can click on this link to his Gemara Blog to see the full list with links;

http://noamgemara.blogspot.com/

Out of the ones he shared, I really love zamzar which is a file conversion service.  I am always so annoyed when a student sends me a file that cannot be opened on my computer.  Often when students work with each other this is a huge point of conflict.  I am so excited to share this and use this tool to end that frustration. 

Another one that he shared was dippity.  This tool allows you to create timelines.  All year I was struggling to put up a timeline in class that showed both the Jewish history and secular history that we were learning in ancient times.  Students really want to see how the timelines interconnect and where the events fall in relationship with each other.  I am so excited to use this tool next year to either create for my students or have my students help create that allows them to see the timeline of history.  

I just watched a session from the ISTE conference called “Tra-Digital History: Bringing History Alive!”. It was about using technology to teach students history. The big goal of the use of technology by this teacher is to teach students to think and learn about history the way historians do. When I first learned about blended learning, I thought it meant using online programs/curricula to teach the content of your subject area. I have learned that it means using technology in any form with a teacher also teaching. In this workshop, the teacher is clearly teaching and giving students that face to face instruction and more importantly interaction that students crave and need. He is using technology to bring primary sources such as pictures, firsthand accounts, documents, maps to the fingertips of his students. He then has his students examine and question them to discover the history the way a historian would. He also had students use them as a jumping point for creative work related to the historic events. It reminded me of how science teachers use investigations to teach scientific concepts and methods of science. It reminded me of how first and foremost when figuring out how to implement technology in our classroom we need to think about our goals for the subject area and what tools could help our students best reach those goals.
http://www.isteconference.org/ISTE/2011/program/search_results_details.php?sessionid=60843135&selection_id=72057244&rownumber=1&max=1&gopage