Your ideal Classroom 2.0 workshop?

I do some adjunct work for a local university, mostly 2 to 3 day workshops where teachers enrolled in a technology in education program can take as electives. I'm currently working on a proposal for a Web 2.0/Classroom 2.0 workshop, and I'm wondering what sorts of elements you all would like to see included in an ideal workshop scenario. What apps do you think are essential to educators? to students? What projects have you done or seen that have been worthwhile? Any insight you'd like to share on using Web 2.0 in the education context would be greatly appreciated.

I'm planning on using Web 2.0 items such as this ning, the global education ning that I started, and various other services etc that I am demoing in a global ed workshop at NECC. For example, I've created a wiki and a Flickr group using the global ed theme.

Tags: education, teacher, web2.0, workshop

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Permalink Reply by David Warlick on May 26, 2007 at 7:31am

It should offer lots of opportunities to learn from each other -- generate lots of conversations. It should also allow time for reflection, journaling, and conversations based on the journaling (blogging).

You should also have a starting definition of Classroom 2.0, and mirror that as much as possible.

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Permalink Reply by Ginger Lewman on May 27, 2007 at 8:52am

This sounds like a great opportunity! As an additional suggesion, I think it must occur with the input of students who are doing this. It should take the participants into a real 21st century classroom. Learning in a vaccuum is like spitting into the wind: you get the spit out, but it's messy, and frequently unproductive! :) Well, maybe not as bad as all that, but in order to get teachers to think in this sort of way, they have to look at, see, feel, smell, hear real-world classrooms and kids in action.

To watch videos, post blogs, discuss, and to investigate/try out tools away from their intended use is not necessarily the best way to learn about gardening, and it's certainly not the way to learn about how to teach differently. We have to get our hands dirty. As one of my favorite art teachers told my a few years ago (while she was still in school and a para-educator in my room), "if ya ain't got it on ya, ya ain't got it in ya!" I whole-heartedly believe this also applies to 21st Century learning.

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Lawrence on May 27, 2007 at 12:19pm

The parts of the web 2.0 workshops that I have done that I like include:
Model the use of the tools. For example, my co-presenter and I created our syllabus online using Google docs.
We also created a tag in del.icio.us that we designated for our workshop and included all the links. We gave the teachers suggestions to create their own interdepartmental tags like cchsenglish -- which stood for Cleveland Heights High School English department. So that once the whole department is tuned in, they can all contribute or take from what others in the school have suggested.
Kathy Lawrence

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Permalink Reply by Sharon Betts on May 27, 2007 at 4:43pm

Lucy,
When I lead a workshop, I always make sure the participants leave with something they can immediately use. I would have them setup a blog and wiki and come up with at least one way they will use it/them in their everyday classrooms. Then I also model the applications (as you have already mentioned). I also always offer continued forums for when they have questions. In 3 days, you can cover a lot of material - be selective and pick tools that are not high learning curves and quickly usable.

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Permalink Reply by Frances Bell on May 29, 2007 at 2:31am

HI Lucy,
Helen Keegan and I ran a Web 2.0 after work session (about one hour) at our University and it was pretty well-attended (lots of interest out there). Here is the Web 2.0 wiki we ran, and that participants could add to afterwards http://slicwiki.wetpaint.com/. We are following that up with a face to face workshop this September at our Salford Education Conference. If you make me your friend I can email you the workshop proposal.
I think the key ingredients for participants:
* What - meaningful experiences so they know what Web 2.0 technolgies are, and most importantly, how they fit together (they come out wanting to use RSS for example)
* Why - links to pedagogy and valid learning activities for students
* How - concrete links to future activities - this could be really easy like linking from BlackCT to their del.icio.us tag for their subject area and getting students to contribute too
P.S. Why not is also quite useful ;-)