Web 2.0 Reflections and Links

I have begun my adventures into using technology for educational purposes. I am experimenting with resources I have never used before.

Glogster is one I am familiar with and was very impressed when I saw it at a Social Studies conference and thought this would be an awesome way to engage my students in the classroom. One of their assignments for 8th grade Georgia History was to create a glog on the Dahlonega Gold Rush. I ran into issues in the classroom and did not use the edu version of glogster. So, I allowed my students to make accounts and begin their glogs. Low and behold not realizing that other people had made glogs on EVERYTHING you could imagine. Then, in the middle of the assignment, when students were about finished, Glogster closed down their site temporarily to "clean up the site". I was turned off and have not tried Glogster since, but I enjoyed my project. I may try this again some day in the future using the education version. But, check out my glog in the meantime:
http://celestetfrey.edu.glogster.com/georgiabecomesastate/

Animoto is a new site to me and I thought it was awesome. This is a resource I would impliment into my classroom because it would allow the students to make quick snap shots on a certain topic. I enjoyed creating my animoto. However, in the instructions of the assignment I was thrown off by not being able to use copyrighted pictures. As a history major it was hard to use "copyright/creative" free pictures because it did not actually depict the true event. For instance, I tried to depict the French and Indian War so it just made me think more creatively when it came to how I was going to show the war. Check out my video on the Causes of the American Revolution:
http://animoto.com/play/sm9tpcKOFLQ2X7zVoEY4dg

For my third and final adventure with technology for my Web 2.0 assignment, I was familiar and excited to see voki as one of our choices. I created my avatar of Lyman Hall, and once I was ready to publish my avatar, the website informed me that I couldn't publish him because I did not have voki classroom. They wanted me to sign up for an account and provide my credit card information. I could not find a way around this, did anyone else create a voki successfully? Then I tried Fakebook. I created a Fakebook for George Walton and it refused to save and my work was deleted. Then, I tried to create a Tikatok Book, which I thought was really neat and excited to publish. When I finished, my book had not saved and was completely deleted. I assume the reason for my technology disfunctioning was that my husband and I were on the internet at the same time. So, my internet was not working as strong. I gave up for the evening, and decided to try again in the morning after my frustration. I was successful today and recreated my tikatok book. The Tikatok book is a resource I would implement into my classroom. I really enjoyed it. Check out my tikatok:
http://www.tikatok.com/view/book/reasons-for-the-american-revolution/unlock/true

Some of my issues are typical issues that students will encounter in the classroom daily. This is normal when working with technology. The best thing is to be patient and keep trying!