Trying out web 2.0 technologies

There are a great many new technologies available of the "web 2.0" variety. These include blogs, wikis, social networking, social bookmarking, and sharing of photos, documents, and applications.

A recent survey conducted among American teens found that 59% of them believe that their schools are not preparing them adequately for a career in technology or engineering. For more about this survey, see the 2008 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index .

I believe a big part of this is the inability of teachers to get their heads and hands around the new technologies. We don't know how to use these things, and consequently we cannot teach sdstudents how to use them effectively. Note that students learn how to use the new technologies on their own by playing with them and figuring out how to use them for their own purposes. But effective use for work related purposes is another story.

To help you with your explorations into the new technologies, I recommend two websites: 1) Common Craft is a creative commons website that posts highly creative short videos explaining some of these technologies - In Plain English. You can find them at:
http://www.commoncraft.com/show.

As an example, I give you: Blogs in Plain English from the common craft website:



2) Atomic Learning is a website that offers short Quicktime training videos on a vast range of software applications for both Windows platform and Mac. Some videos are free, and others are available through a purchased membership. The basics of most applications are free. Find them at http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/home
At the moment you can do the complete workshop on blogging for free at:
http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/blogging

Why don't you explore some of these resources? Next time I will tell you about Moodle - an open source course management application with some easy to use features that can help you set up distance learning portions of your classroom teaching.