A Web 2.0 Presentation…
Welcome to my presentation on the educational benefits of Web 2.0. In order to conserve a little bit of “teacher talking time” today, I thought that I would incorporate my blog into the presentation. Through this site, you can find links and examples of some of the Web 2.0 applications that I’ll be discussing during my time here.
I’d like to keep the focus of the presentation on this site and encourage you to read through what I’ve posted and offer your comments on anything that catches your eye. Over the course of the afternoon, I’d like to see some discussion take place on how to implement some of these technologies in our classrooms. So please, feel free to use my site as a forum for your comments. Just click on the comments tag at the bottom of my post to write your thoughts.
Web 2.0 Applications
Click Here for my post on Blogging and RSS
Click Here for my post on Podcasting and Vodcasting
Click here for my post on Wikis and Online Collaboration
Purpose
The purpose of today’s presentation is to introduce you to many of the online tools available for your classroom. In the past, I’ve done presentations where I’ve guided other teachers through creating a blogsite or a wiki, but that’s not really my goal today. One thing that I’ve discovered is that these projects take a bit of planning. Just making a wiki or a blog without any plan can be a frustrating experience. So my goal today is to show you some resources and allow you the chance to come up with ideas on how to use them. If, during the course of the class, you would like to get started on one of these projects, feel free. But please let us know through the comments section what your ideas are…and how you plan to implement them.
Reasoning
The Internet community is undergoing a change. Surfing the web once entailed passively reading and consuming the information that was available. Today’s savvy websurfer is not only a consumer, but a contributor. Our students are adapting to this new socially driven web. In my classes, it is the rare student that isn’t on Myspace or Facebook or hasn’t visited Youtube or Flickr. As Will Richardson said in his book, they are “digital natives.” In many cases, as their teachers, we are “digital immigrants.” We’re trying to keep up with all these changes when we’ve just finished learning the previous ones. But we have to keep up. We even have to innovate sometimes. And we most definitely have to understand this technology so that we can teach our students how to use it safely and responsibly.
I hope you enjoy the presentation. Please leave any comments or suggestions for how I can improve it. You may download the powerpoint portion of this presentation here. Thanks!
