There needs to be greater sharing amongst educators. The opportunities are limited to the imagination for the current "iLearners". Have you been using digital files like mp3's to teach? Have you started podcasting your lessons? Why not? It would be ideal for sick students that miss a day. Have you been using twitter to generate parental involvement? These are all ways to leverage devices constructively. The kids are using them all the time anyway..it would be better to fill them with content that is actually useful..go to www.rhymenlearn.com I'm still early in start-up phase but you get the idea. I send out free content every week via email on the how to..If any more companies like this exist please send them my way..Thanks!!

If I can pick only one, I'd look for a tool with what Mitch Resnick refers to as a low floor, wide walls, and a high ceiling. In the Web 2.0 world you have several that fit that description. Our teachers and students seem to have gravitated toward wikis during the first half of this school year. You can find a variety of pages here: http://www.wikis.birmingham.k12.mi.us/.

http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/07/mits-mitch-resn.html

Go2Web20.net is a daunting website, Jim, and one that I've spent (literally) hours playing with. Every time I look into it, I constantly think this would be cool and this would work so well in my XXX unit. I have pulled much from it that has enriched both my classroom and my life.

That being said, I hope the first advice veteran teachers are giving to younger teachers is not which Web 2.0 tool to use, but rather a caveat in riding their chosen tools to the end of the year, as well as a clear curricular frame that the technology support. Such guidance would have guided me well my first year of teaching --- a year that looked more like a Web 2.0 barf than as sound teaching, as I pulled my students through one web-tool after another, telling them that we were all learning in the process.

Kids like technology --- sure. But more than that, they like consistency, transparency and relevance. The 2.0 possibilities so often come across as one-offs, and we oftentimes lose sight of our curriculum behind the sites we use.

That being said, as sound tools, I think the 2 best tools are the oldest: a Ning (which gives a blog to each student and a threaded forum) and a means of creating digital storytelling content. Embed the usage of each into the course from day one, hammer the multifoliate aspects of each from the first day, and I think you have enough fuel to feed an entire year. Save Go2Web20.net for mid-June, when you're thinking about the year to come.

Jeremiah -

Well said. Choice is a good thing until the choices become overwhelming. I am reminded of a piece I posted here on the Spiral Notebook a while back, entitled, "Too Sweet and Juicy: Can There Really Be Too Much of a Good Thing with Tech?"

Like everything, becoming clear and focused is always a help. I like your suggestion that teachers decide on the tools they are going to use, and then, "Embed the usage of each into the course from day one, hammer the multifoliate aspects of each from the first day..."

Cheers.

Jim

I don't know if you have tried it yet, but there is another great site at www.simplespark.com that allows you to enter a search topic like education and then returns a "multitude" Web 2.0 oriented sites. I am in the process of reorganizing my middle school curriculum and also working with other teachers in my school to integrate Web 2.0. It is great to find all of these available resources, but there just never seems to be enough time to try them all out.

Go2web20.net is a Flash site. Navigation is particular perverse on Flash sites. The site loads slowly. It couldn't be worse.

Simplespark, mentioned in the top post by Richard Fair, is a couple of orders of magnitude better code.

For a critique of Flash sites, with comments, see,
j-walkblog.com, (scroll up, too).

and here,
glyphobet.net, for "Why your Flash website sucks."

Many users set their browsers to block Flash sites.

- govtwork

Joel & Richard -

And that, once again, is why my five favorite words continue to be, "Jim, have you seen this?" The human network is, in the end, the most important one, eh?

With no pride of authorship, I remain,

Jim

;-}

We are test driving the free Google School apps for education in our middle school. We bought a domain name for only $10.00. I was able to upload 100 kids as users all at once using their mass enrollment tools and an Excel file converted to a CSV file. (I learned how to convert an Excel to CSV as I was working on the project.) The students will have access to the collaborative tools - Google Docs and Google Sites. They will also have email, but, for now, it can only be used with other members of the domain. Our first project will be having the students build a web page on all aspects of weather which they will use as a review for the unit they are studying in science. Hopefully, it will be a nice resource for other students around the world.
We have used Google sites before with two other teams, but it was a laborious process to get all of the kids uploaded individually; each kid set up an account, but there was confusion, forgotten usernames and passwords, etc. Still, the group web page the 8th graders produced on Native American Indigenous Cultures was a success for the most part, and the kids said they enjoyed putting their pages together far more than just writing a report. They also said they spent more time on the project knowing that their peers would be looking at their pages and commenting.
Of course, we stress ethics as well as the assignment.
Carolyn Stanley
Bethany Middle School
CT

Joe I an just starting my masters on instructional tech and I am amazed at the applications you mentioned. I get excited when I hear about the use of podcasts and twitter for parent involvement. I will check out your site. Thanks for the heads up.

Web 2.0 and online interaction is not only an important addition to education, learning to interact online with one another and teachers is a critical part of their education - aside from the actual subject matter. I view my own son playing "World of Warcraft" - an online multiplayer game- with a certain frustration as I'd rather see him reading. However he is actually learning the critical lessons for future work- collaboration on projects in real time, internationally and 24/7. This is the future of human interaction and future work. Online tutoring is another aspect. I suggest looking at www.youronlinetutors.com as a model for the future of tutoring- low cost, international, 24/7.