Web 2.0 - 2 Workshops I Attended

Well, I spent quite a bit of my time trying to get a grip on how to use Web 2.0 tools in the district with students. The challenges for me are security, educational value, cost, and ease of use. Free tools are wonderful - but I have to make sure that if I get 600 teacher and 8000 students using the tools, that the tools will continue to be there once they have become a part of their learning process.

Web 2.0 - The Ripple Effect (presented by Cheryl Lemke, the Metri Group)

I took away three things from this:

1. Don't duplicate bad teaching pedagogy digitally. Notice in the diagram below, the typical class discussion is the teacher asking questions, the students answering questions. If the interaction was truly a sustained discussion, it would look more like the diagram on the right. Unfortunately, it is easy to blog duplicate the same problem when blogging. Be sure that your blogs are open ended and allow for sustained discussion.

2. Voice Thread (http://www.voicethread.com/): new term to me - it is a way for participants to record their observations instead of typing them. Very interesting options for students, particularly those who may have trouble with the written word.

3. Scratch: this is an incredible free resource for younger students to do some simple programming. I've got it downloaded and look forward to playing!

Classroom 2.0: What is Web 2.0's role in Schools? (Steve Hargadon)
Well, this turned out to be a debate about back channeling - in this case, there was a panel of 7 experts discussing different aspects of Web 2.0. On the screen was a Chatzy discussion - everyone in the audience could participate via their laptops. What was interesting was how abrupt the tone of the conversation was on the chat. It did not match the verbal discussion at all! I wonder if this is typical...
It would be interesting to see if you could set this up in a high school classroom where there is a class dicussion going on, but students are able to use their cell phones to post to a "back-channel".