EduWeb 2.0: 11 Things & Counting

Many of you are likely here because you want to learn more about the buzzword that we seem to be hearing so often...Web 2.0. Lets begin by making sure that we all know what Web 2.0 is and why it is relevant to us an educators. Web 2.0 refers to web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing. Web 2.0 sites allow users to do more than just read information. They give users the ability to collaborate with one another and change website content.

This learning adventure has 11 Things for you to do. There will be many opportunities for you to explore, experiment with, and think about ways to use these tools in your own life, with colleagues, and with your students. There are thousands of Web 2.0 tools out there, so please do not limit yourself to what you see here.

Your first task will be to setup a blog. Your blog will be used to follow your progress and assist with you with questions that you might have. Good luck and have fun!

For Thing #1, you are going to create your own blog, which will be used to reflect on each of your tasks throughout this journey. Let's get started!

A blog is a on-line journal. It displays the writing of a given author around the topic of their choice. Please watch Blogs in Plain English and take some time to look at the examples below. It will give you a better understanding of what a blog is and how students, staff, and even entire schools use blogs to share their thinking with the world.



Free Technology for Teachers - Ideas for technology integration in education

Look at My Happy Rainbow - Kindergarten teacher

Sweeney Math - High school math teacher

Two Writing Teachers - Two teachers, 565 miles apart, devoted to the teaching of writing

iLearn Technology - edublog about integrating technology into the classroom

The Longfellow Ten - collaborative middle school stop-motion project

There are a variety of blogging platforms out there. We will be using Blogger (aka blogspot), which is a Google application. If you do not already have a Gmail account, you will need to create one. This video will guide you through the account setup steps.

If you already have a Gmail account, you are ready to create your blog.

This document walks you through the steps to creating a blog in Blogger. The document is in Google Docs, so you will be prompted to login to your account.

To complete Thing #1:

Setup your own blog and add your first post. In your first post, say hello and reflect on your initial thoughts on blogging in education. Also, it is VERY important that you e-mail me your blog link at brooke.storms@kentwoodps.org.