Week 1 - Blog Posting #1 - Web 2.0

Web 2.0 to me is fantastic, exciting, creative, connecting, and finally frustrating. You may wonder why I started with all those great things and then ended with a negative. The reason why I think it is frustrating is because there are so many things you can do with web 2.0 with a multitude of great sites and great applications that it can get overwhelming trying to decide what to use. About the time I find one (a website) that I think will work really well for the content I’m having the students work on, I find another one that looks equally great or even better. I’m learning to look for specific tools that do specific things and keep focused on that so I don’t get overwhelmed.

As a fifth grade teacher with students that are pre-Facebook and Twitter is blocked I’ve had to look for alternatives. My students have enjoyed blogging at http://www.classblogmeister.com. This blog site has been designed for education where nothing is posted or commented on till it goes through the teacher. It’s been great to see parents post comments to their own children’s blogs. Another site my students have enjoyed is http://voicethread.com/#home. I’ve had students tell stories through a storyboard format with audio. Voice Thread has been described as Power Point on steroids. One of the Web 2.0 tools I want to use more of this year is a Wiki. I’ve had an account with www.wikispaces.com for at least two years, but haven’t used it. Last month in our team project we used Google Docs so much it got me excited about Wiki’s so that has become a goal for my classroom.

As you’ll find in this Ted talk Web 2.0 is here to stay, but is going to move forward. Kevin Kelly talks about the next 5000 days on the web. This is a Ted talk from Dec. 2007 on what the web is and what it will become as Web 2.0 moves on to Web 3.0. He concludes with the idea that “We are the Web”. You can see this at: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html. When you look at all the social connecting tools being used today you can certainly see why “We are the Web”. The users of the web are the molders of what the web is becoming.

The link: http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=1, (Sept. 30, 2005) is another great resource explaining what and where Web 2.0 came from. It goes through the history of Web 1.0 using the example of Netscape and moving into Web 2.0 with Google as its example. It follows many of the leading Web 2.0 tools and what they represent.

I look forward to working more and more with Web 2.0 tools as I immerse my students in using the Internet for their learning.