Show and Tell

          I definitely think that it is important for students to showcase what they have created and have a chance to be truly proud of their work.  It's nice to look at something you made and see that it's good, but being able to show it to larger audiences and have them experience it as well is exhilarating and fun!  For example, when I finished my Girl Scout Gold Award, my Girl Scout leader invited local newspapers to interview us, as well as some news stations, and she even made a blog about it.  From my own experience, I know how good it feels to have your hard work out there for the world to experience.
          I focused at looking at the different tools you can use to make students' work known and open for others to enjoy.

• Taskstream: I really liked Taskstream because it kind of looked and felt like a blog for students to use, rather than a portfolio website to show what they learned (while it does seem to do that well).  I really liked the share feature that it has, that allows you to email and post it to other places for people to see.  I believe that would be helpful for teachers to show parents how their students have grown and developed, as well as showing them how much potential and ability that their children have.  I could see myself using a program like Taskstream to help my students and their parents be proud of accomplishments and abilities.  I think that it is also good because it provides a way for students to make back-ups of their work, in case something ever happens.  Parents may not be able to post all of this work up on the fridge, but they do have something to look back on and show others.
• I liked the idea of having students create their own blogs or wikis to showcase what they have learned and how far they have come, or for them to showcase their best work for others to see.  I think I would want to use something like Wikispaces or maybe weebly to have my students create their museums to showcase themselves!  They're also fun to design and play around with.  It can also be easier to share by simply emailing someone a link and being done with it.  They also allow you to download and back up your pages, which is a plus.  Then, maybe some parents could put it up on the fridge!
• Finally, I liked the idea of making a Facebook page for the class, but maybe not for showcasing material.  Because Facebook is so open and searchable, it's hard to protect content or make sure that only the right people will see it.  Not that this is a bad thing: of course I want people to see my students' accomplishments, but I want to be able to control what gets seen or what people post without having to babysit the page too too much.  If I were to ever use this, I would want to maybe use something like Twitterfeed to control where it goes.  If I decide to use a Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr to showcase my student accomplishments, it would be helpful to use all those resources in different ways (i.e. post homework assignments or updates on Facebook and Twitter, and visual artifacts or videos on Tumblr, or some other combination).  It seemed like an easy to use tool that would save a lot of time.