My Favorite Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 as I understand it came around while I was still living in Japan.  I can still remember where and when I first heard about it.  I was driving to a friend's house in the country listening to a podcast of NPR's Fresh Air when one of their critics began talking about checking out old concert videos on a site called YouTube that I'd never heard of before.  Once at my friend's house I borrowed his computer to see what this YouTube was all about, and was immediately hooked. 

There seem to be two basic ideas behind Web 2.0, one is that content is created by the users, not mediated to a central company that you pay for their service.  This is the idea behind YouTube and social networking sites like Facebook.  People create their own entertainment and share it with everyone else.  The other idea, which I think is more important, is the idea of the internet being the location for a computer's applications and storage, and the computer being a terminal with which you access them.  This is the idea on which GoogleDocs, to give one example, is based.  The reason this is so significant is that users are no longer necessarily tied to one specific computer.  If you begin a file on GoogleDocs at home, you can continue to work on it at a friend's house or the library or the office without having to carry anything with you.  

Having worked in my own classroom for nearly a year now, the advantages of this to education are pretty attractive.  One of the biggest issues we had with using technology last year was file storage and transfer.  Every child had his or her own thumb-drive, but as with anything else, they are easily lost and many projects were lost this way.  With some Mac users and some PC users we also had compatibility issues between different types of software and different operating systems.  This year we are in the process of shifting everyone to GoogleDocs, and though this process isn't yet complete, I think this is going to make a big difference in fixing some of the issues we dealt with last year.

One tool that looks interesting to me is screentoaster.com.  I really like the idea of creating a short demonstration of how to complete a task ahead of time and having that presentation available for my students online in case one of them was either absent or needed to see it again to understand what I was trying to show.  Like anything else, it will take some getting used to, but I see a lot of potential for this sort of tool.

My Favorite Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 is a radical change in how computers interact with the internet.  Previously, computer applications and file storage were all done on one's own personal computer with the internet being a means of sending information from one computer to another.  Under Web 2.0, applications and file storage move to the internet while the computer becomes a terminal with which to access them.  This has many advantages to computer use in the classroom.  Computers that only serve as terminals to the internet are much less expensive and much less complicated than traditional computers that have software loaded on them directly.  Using school computers as a terminal also allows students to continue working on assignments at home regardless of whether or not their home computer has the necessary loaded.

2009 OTEN Conference

Posting somewhat late on my trip to the OTEN conference last Saturday.  You can hear my observations for yourself in the Yodio clips I've posted below, but here is the summary of what I thought.  The best compliment I can give is that, on a beautiful sunny day in which I had a long list of things I needed to take care of to get ready for the next week of school, I'm STILL glad that I took the time to attend.  The keynote speech and the work sessions inspired me to think of ways I could use technology in my classes, and at this point it looks like I'll be trying out a few new things this year (short video projects, web sites etc.) because of what I heard there.  Check out the audio for more details about what I did and what I learned.

Keynote Speech

Work Session 1

Work Session 2

Blogs

In getting ready for this blog post, I've been having difficulty imagining how I would make use of blogs in my classroom.  I've never been much of a user or reader of blogs in the past, and to be honest, what time I have spent with them has convinced me that most blogging is either narcissistic, a waste of time, or both.  I also think that the age of my students (4th and 5th grade) limits the role blogs could play in my classroom.  In playing around with this technology the last couple of weeks for my ed tech class, though, I think I understand how it could be helpful to me if used in the right way.  Here are a few possibilities I've come up with.

First (and foremost!) a classroom blog could be a useful way to keep the parents and students informed as to what's going on in the class.  Communication between the teachers and parents is very important to my school, and I already do this to some degree.  Each of the teachers has a web page through the school similar to a blog that we can update any time we like, and for the most part we use it once a week to explain what the parents and students can expect over the next week.  Finding the time to update more often than that has proven difficult, but I think it's a good idea.  A blog serving a similar function would make leaving comments or questions possible, and that would be helpful.  Responding to all the comments on the other hand. . .

A blog could also be used something like a wiki, where students go out and find as many pieces of information on a topic as possible and post it on the blog.  I can imagine giving an assignment that asks the students to go out on the internet for information on a historical figure (how about George Washington, since we're covering American history this year?), post it on the blog and then add a comment or two on what their classmates have added.

Having each of the students maintain and update their own blogs for their class, as we are for ours, would open up possibilities for completing assignments online.  This could simplify the grading and turn-in process which always takes more time from the class than it should.  I also like the fact that other students could add their comments in a way that they couldn't in a normal classroom setting.  

I'm going to have to become more familiar with blogs myself before I can understand all of the possibilities for using them in my own classroom, but the possibilities are out their, and they're certainly worth looking into.