Web 2.0

Welcome to my first post, dedicated to my current vision of Web 2.0, and how I might use it in teaching middle school.

Web 2.0 is the "read/write" web, the interactive web. It's called 2.0, according to Wikipedia, the ground-breaking, interactive, editable online encyclopedia, because this new environment includes technologies such as blogs, podcasts, wikis, and social networking sites that imply a significant change in web usage. Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Web 2.0 is social, it's collaborative, it's open, it's creative, it's (almost) free. The definition includes tools we can use (document sharing, online journals, online calendars, podcasts, social bookmarking) and attitudes we can admire (audience counts, sharing is crucial, and it's all about collaboration). Web 2.0 is the lifestyle already used by digital natives for communicating and sharing photos and placing their entire life online so we can all follow their every move -- the culture has changed irreversibly -- and we digital immigrants can take advantage of the energy in this new technology to encourage group project collaboration, better student writing, and effective peer review.

Allyson Schut and I attended the NECC Technology Conference in Atlanta in June, where I was amazed at the power of this new Web 2.0 direction in all the workshops and keynotes. I was inspired by what can be done, and I was impressed by how dedicated the teachers were to transferring good teaching practices and high expectations to the work students do online. It's not just technology for its own sake; it's encouraging the same cooperation and communication we encourage in the classroom, with the added value of planning for an audience.

Since NECC, Allyson and Peter Zingg and I have joined Classroom 2.0 (where you're reading this), an exciting forum/platform/environment for teachers to share ideas about 2.0 applications and teaching ideas. Please browse this site to see what teachers are saying; I especially love the forums (click on Forum above), where a question or provocative topic is posted, and many teachers respond in a discussion format.

In addition, I've added a couple applications to my repertoire: del.icio.us, which is a place to save your browser bookmarks online and make them available to students or colleagues, and wikispaces, which is an application where students or teachers can post information, see each other's posts and comments, and edit what is there. I've used del.icio.us for collecting bookmarks on ancient history and Web 2.0 sites (visit http://del.icio.us/pgoetz6), and I've used wikispaces to collect Kentfield teacher ideas on technology use (visit http://ksdtechuses.wikispaces.com).

My favorite workshop at NECC was the Emerging Technologies Discussion Group, where teachers from all over the world got together to share what they're doing, and to commit to trying new classroom methods to see whether they can enhance student learning, communication, and productivity. Out of that experience, I decided to focus on two areas to try out: (1) student writing in blog format (for individual writing subject to peer review) and in google docs format (for collaborative writing), and (2) online literature discussions using a blog with student and/or teacher posts followed by student responses.

Aside from my attendance at NECC, it was Teri and Ryan who got me interested in Web 2.0 and student online collaboration. Teri has been using eboard, an inexpensive application allowing teachers and students to post writing and comments (along with other organizational tools such as a calendar), and Ryan has been using gaggle.net, an online discussion forum where students have communicated with Ryan and with each other regarding upcoming tests and other curriculum matters. Thanks for the inspiration! Thanks, too, to Peter and Julian and Reed, and others, who are helping me think about ways to incorporate technology into teaching and learning.

School is about to start. I'm going to try to carry out the two plans in the first trimester, and write another post or two about the experience.

Cheers.