Exploring go2web20.net

I explored the website http://www.go2web20.net today. My first reaction was overwhelmed as I realized just how many activities and tools there were available to explore. I started flipping through the pages looking for something that stood out as interesting, both for me personally as well as thinking about my future role as a teacher.

The first application that struck my fancy was titled “Little Bird Tales”. The subtitle read “capture the voice of childhood”. I think it caught my eye initially because of the cutesy artwork, which definitely marked it as intended for use by children. And the fact that it had “tales” in the title told me that it probably involved reading or writing. As a self-proclaimed bookworm and mother who sees great value in books for children, I clicked on the link.

I was brought to an informational page which offered the following information:

Little Bird Tales was created to help nurture children's creativity and imagination while simultaneously creating one of a kind childhood treasures that can easily be shared. It is dedicated to providing a safe web environment for children, free of advertising, merchandising and links to other sites.

Free, creativity, imagination, treasures, shared, safe. All key interest words for this mama and future teacher. I proceeded through to the site. http://www.go2web20.net/site/?a=LittleBirdTales

The initial page was very user friendly, with large and colorful buttons and fun graphics. In addition to the area in which I could create a tale, there was a fun “Green Tip of the Week” (Create a "no garbage" lunch! First, use a lunch box or reusable lunch sack rather than paper bags. Then, rather than using sandwich and snack bags, use reusable washable containers. Finally, reuse plastic forks and spoons, and bring cloth napkins or washcloths rather than paper towels! When you have nothing to throw away after lunch, you get an A+ from planet Earth!) and an area that featured a “Craft of the Month”. This month was a craft titled “Spring in a Box!” and proclaimed that it was “This is a really fun craft to try before, or even after, Easter! Make a cool diorama with a shoe or tissue box, small toys and flowers. If you don't have old silk flowers to use, you can make some with scraps of tissue paper!”

When I chose to create a tale, it brought me to a very easy template in which I could create an online storybook, complete with audio narration. I registered with the site, a very easy process that just required name, email address, and password. Then I was off creating my personalized tale.

I did a quick example with just a title page and then one story page. For the title page I played with importing an image from my computer (very easy) and then using the draw feature to highlight an area of my picture. Any images uploaded are immediately saved to your personal gallery. For the second page, I drew a picture from scratch using their draw feature, very similar to ‘paint’ programs. On both pages, I was able to use my microphone to add audio to the pages. I chose to narrate them. After completing my story beginning, I was given the option to save the story as a PDF, was given a link to share with others (http://littlebirdtales.com/tales/view/story_id/90388, check it out!), and was given an embed code to imbed the story in a web page. The only thing that cost any money was if I chose to purchase the tale as an MP4 file. This was $0.99, and gave me a file that I could download that would be playable on any device that supports MP4 files.

Overall, I found this site to have multiple and fantastic opportunities for young children. Teacher can create books which can be accessed by their students for reading help. Teachers could record students reading existing stories for a record of reading levels. Students can create personalized stories and artwork. Older students could create reports and unit summaries utilizing their own photos as well as drawings, and narrate what they have learned. I can see this possibly taking the place of Power Points for some presentations, as it allows for colorful and easy personalization. It was fun, free, and had great literacy and overall educational possibilities.

I also checked out an application called “Sweet Search” (http://www.go2web20.net/site/?a=Sweetsearch). Its subtitle offered it as a “Search Engine for Students”, and promised that it

searches only the 35,000 Web sites that its staff of research experts and librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved. It constantly evaluates the search results and "fine-tunes" them, by increasing the ranking of Web sites from organizations such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, PBS and university Web sites.

This one caught my attention because as a parent, I have had some negative run-ins with Google. For instance, a Google Image search a couple years back got interesting when my son asked what baby cougars looked like, and I typed those two words into the search field. Oh the joy of social homonyms.

In addition to the basic search window, the site offered more specific search options and links such as:

Teaching Web Research Skills teaches Web research skills to educators and students

SweetSearch4Me is our search engine for emerging learners.

SweetSearch2Day is where students Learn Something New Every Day.

SweetSearch Biographies for profiles of 1,000+ significant people.

SweetSearch Social Studies for our best social studies content.

So I gave it a try. After my previous run-in with the word cougar, I gave that word a go in the search window. My first impression was disappointment. As I scrolled through the websites offered, not one was actually about the animal (never mind being an educational site about them). I guess I had had visions of National Geographic and Ranger Rick type sites coming up. Instead, I got numerous sites that featured cougar in their name. Examples include camps, schools with a cougar mascot, housing, and the car.

To make matters worse, the 9^th entry was brought up as an article titled “New school can’t be Cougars because middle-aged women might be offended”. Included in the preview was the information “In the current edition of the Webster Dictionary, the second definition for cougar sights a slang terminology that refers to "a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man." Yikes, all this before ANYTHING that actually had anything to do with the animal. In fact, I couldn’t find any articles in my quick search that actually did talk about the animal. I did, though, come across an article about the television show “Cougar Town”. Not what I was hoping for.

Because of this disappointment, I went ahead and tried out the query “sex”. With the lack of educational websites on the first search, I was curious what might come up if a student tried this one out. I got lots of journal-type entries that featured sex talk (sex chromosomes, sexual behavior, sexual disorders). The media once again reared its ugly head with ‘Sex and the City’ at the box office as well. And there were articles addressing sex drives in women, the Catholic view on sex, and information regarding rulings and human rights regarding sexual offenders.

The good news was, both searches brought up no pornography or lewd images/photos. But given the site’s student-centered focus, I was really hoping for more educational findings. I was thinking Encyclopedia Britannica and PBS. Instead I got sites perhaps of value to a college student searching for topics. But this seems a bit off-the-mark. Isn’t the point of safe search engines to protect our children? While the sites might be of some value to a college student, we’re talking about adults now. In this sense I was disappointed.

Looking strictly at the technological aspects of the search engine, it was pretty user friendly. It gave a good preview of each listing beneath the title, and clicking anywhere in that preview section would bring up a window that allowed to you peruse the writing without actually having to take the time to link over to the website. The problem was, the articles were pretty random and irrelevant, in my opinion. They might be somewhat safe, but I’m disappointed that cougar brought up several sites about a car and none about the animal.

I did go on to play with the SweetSearchBiographies, and that one was pretty neat. It broke biographies into categories, and then listed individuals alphabetically. The information was clear cut and interesting, broken down into good sized chucks. Best of all, each page had a “cite” button that gave, when clicked, the proper citation for the page with a choice of APA, MLA, and Chicago styles. This was definitely a site that offered a wealth of information and resources to students!

Feeling better about Sweet Search, I gave the Social Studies area a try. This one was great as well, offering historical images, sections including government, economics, US history broken into periods, help on writing biographies, and tips on web searches. I can absolutely see myself using this one as both a parent as well as a teacher.

SweetSearch2Day brought up a fun site giving different fact and information. When I visited, I got a mini-biography about Fred Rogers and “Mister Rogers Neighborhood”, information about today in history, and some fun mini-biographies about MLK and Maya Angelou. There were brain teasers, a geography bee quiz, a daily news quiz (Scientists now say the Earth has more than one what? Vernal Equinox, Moon, Way to skin a Cat, or North Pole?), and several other fun and informational teasers. BTW, the answer to the quiz was moon. I totally didn’t know that!

I decided to try one more thing, and clicked on SweetSearch4Me. This engine DID bring up some sites on the animal when I entered ‘cougar’. Unfortunately, they were mostly articles about cougar sightings and attacks. Again, no Ranger Rick or National Geographic. And again, lots of info on Cougar Town and sports teams. ‘Sex’ brought up what looked like the same sites as the original search engine.

So, overall I’d say it was a no-go on the search engines, but the related sites were wonderful! I would bookmark those sites, and avoid the search engines. In fact, I think I’ll return now and get a little more information to impress my friends with ;)