ELT501 #5 Commentary Web 2.0

What's Web 1.0? Web 1.0 - developed in 1996 as read only, had approximately 250 thou sites and 45 million users globally.

What's Web 2.0? Web 2.0 - developed around 2006 as a read/write dynamic, has 80 million + sites, 1 billion + users and a large proportion of user generated content.

Syndication is a hallmark of Web 2.0 technologies. Whereas taxonomy is a term used for classification of resources, “folksonomy” is the way information is organised on the Web 2.0: an open and democratic organisation. Tags are used for labelling. More popular tags are larger. Tags bridge structure and meaning, and therefore reflect social connections.

Examples of Web2.0 technologies are Blogs (blogger, wordpress), Images (Flickr), Wikis (wikispace), Podcasting (odeo), Bookmarks (delicious, Furl), Reading (bloglines, feedburner, googlereader). The possibilities for students using Web 2.0 technologies are fabulous. Students, teacher/librarians and teachers can create a class or individual blogs, collaborate on wikis, create an intranet using wikis, share teaching resources, collect data, record information, assignments or photos...

I watched a few You Tube clips showing what is now possible for the teaching profession, if only we embrace what the kids are already doing. The best of these was “Pay Attention”. The speaker suggested using Podcasts (as there are thousands available in every subject) to reach students on their iPods. We need to “transform teaching through technology”. The other example he used was to use mobile phones to send text messages for gathering data for graphs. My teenage daughter said this would be such a cool thing to do in Maths. Maybe she’s right?

But a T/L I know was horrified to think Students could use phones at school. Issues of privacy, cyberbullying and sexting are her concerns. My concerns are that the legal world is miles behind what’s happening in the cyber-world. What are the impacts for copyright/authorship/plagiarism etc? The teacher librarian needs to be a knowledgeable guide for kids in this remix culture.

There is some interest from the T/Ls at our school for making book trailers, using YouTube etc. This could really be ramped up as a book review option. However the use of blogs and wikis isn’t even being considered, mainly due to the Dept encouraging staff to use the Ultranet, not anything else. Now the unions have blackbanned staff working on the Ultranet so where do keen Victorian Teacher librarians go from here? There is so much more to be done.