Do Web 2.0 Right

This article defines three elements that shape how the teachers they interviewed use web 2.0 tools in their classrooms. The three elements are instituting daily practice, carefully considering the audience, and teaching and enforcing appropriate behavior. I will consider how these three elements affect my efforts to incorporate web 2.0 activities in my classroom.

First of all, daily practice is a struggle as we have just one classroom computer. Therefore, I usually schedule at LEAST one to two days a week for each class in the computer labs and create assignments for students to access on my eboard. I can't wait to try out the ipod touches Kimberly wrote a grant for and is currently using with her students. I am already compiling many applications for daily use with that tool.

The second element is consideration of the audience. I believe that with middle school students this is critical and will make or break an activity. I love the idea of using blogs as communication between myself and individual students. I think they will be much more open to sharing ideas of a personal nature if they know only I will be reading it. I wonder if there is a way to create a blog where others cannot access the content? I will look into it. However, I also think a spirited debate on a less personal topic would motivate all of my students. For example, in my Cowboy unit students write a persuasive essay on their view of the treatment of animals in rodeo, ranch work, or charreadas. I would like to first have a web 2.0 debate for students to argue their position before writing their essay. This way they will see other perspectives before settling on their own stance.

Finally, the article discusses appropriate online behavior. The main idea I took from this element is to limit access to a particular class. For example, I created my first class wiki to be used by all of my classes. Now, I can see the advantages and would prefer to have a separate wiki for each class. One, it will give the class ownership, and two, it offers more security to students as they know only their class will have access to it.

So, I have a few changes I want to make based on the information in this article. I think the first thing I will do is create the separate wikis since I already know how to do that and it won't take forever to figure it out. One thing at a time...

Be Flexible

If there's one thing I've learned from incorporating technology into the curriculum, it's that you'd better be flexible and ready for anything. Unfortunately, technology is not always reliable and you may have to shoot from the hip when it lets you down. For example, just this week I had two flops. First, I had my assignment all planned out to begin with a BrainPOP video and activity on Information Privacy. So, there they are all logging in and one by one I hear "Mrs. Blick!" and "It's not working!" Sure enough, for some reason that one video would not load on any of their computers. Second, I told my students that they would be creating a video presentation to go with a speech they'd already written on a theme to unite our school. I gave them examples from Youtube to look at of what I had in mind for them to create. Well...I hadn't researched quite enough to find the right application to create said videos, and now I'm not sure it's even possible without spending money to buy the tool. imovie won't work for our purpose because the flip cameras have disappeared from our school, and animoto takes "several weeks" to respond to my request for an educator's account. What's left for free is a measly 30 second picture show that doesn't allow for more than 20 characters of text! Still haven't figured out for sure what to do about that. Anyways, headaches aside, I'm still on board and will continue my endeavors to incorporate technology more and more. I'm just sayin'....it's good to be forewarned that you'll probably encounter an occasional glitch in the matrix!