Getting oriented

Problems and opportunities

Trying to create a course about the social web in education is a bit like trying to create a course about China. The topics are vast and constantly changing. But they are also important, unavoidable and massively interesting. So, if we are to take a journey into the land of Web 2.0, how best to proceed? First, some thoughts.

Perspectives About Web Evolution

If there is a web 2.0 then there must have been a web 1.0. How are they different?

Here is how I see the various stages of the web:

• Web 1.0 – roughly 1990-2000: the web was a library and store with relatively few writers and merchants, and large numbers of readers and buyers. It was text centric, and the tools were created by an elite few. You had to be a nerd to be play.
  


• Web 2.0 - beginning roughly 2000: an interactive commons in which we all can collaborate and contribute. It is largely text-based, a comfortable medium for many, making it less threatening than we might suspect.


• Web 2.1 - beginning roughly 2008: Same as Web 2.0, except that it becomes noticeably and progressively less text-centric. Those who felt comfortable with Web 2.0 because of its text focus lose their footing.


• Web 3.0 - beginning roughly 2010: an intelligent, semantic ecosystem that inevitably we will all "write" by virtue of how we create content. Although web 3.0 is beyond the scope of this site, it behooves us to be aware of it now, given that it promises to change anything we do that is web-based - in other words, absolutely everything.

We may get to Web 3.0 a bit later.

To me, web 2.0, in a few bullets, is characterized by the following:

1. Multifaceted connectivity. Consider all the different ways we can connect now, through services like MySpace, blogs, wikis, listservs, email... the list goes on and on. Whatever communication scenario you can imagine for your students, there is a tool to match it.


2. Free tools. This is what is truly extraordinary. Many of the tools that characterize Web 2.0 are developed with programming tools that many, many people use. The result is lots of tools! Want to get a taste? Go to Go To Web 2.0. This site is dedicated to providing access to new Web 2.0 tools as they emerge. Play for an hour, see what is there - everything from group calendars, to tools to download YouTube movies (without having to go to YouTube - great if you are working at a school which blocks YouTube), to programs like Jing, which allow you to create screen casts (recording your voice as you record what is on your screen).


3. A cornucopia of content resources. Because anyone can now "write the web," many do. They create podcasts, YouTube videos, MySpace pages and much more. There are blogs, wikis and listservs about every conceivable subject, including whatever you teach.


4. Tools for taming and organizing the cornucopia. We have gone from information tease to overload in 20 short years. How do we manage the overflow of information we now live with? Fortunately there are tools that help you deal with all of the resources you have at your disposal. Tools like del.icio.us, Furl, RSS feeds and so on help you manage your information. And tools like Wikipedia help you join others in managing what you know on a collective basis.
   


5. Educational projects and teacher friendly resources. While you are free to come up with brand new ideas about how to use Web 2.0 with your students, you don't have to. There are scads of ideas, projects, and resources created by teachers for teachers that you can tap into. It just really boils down to what you want to do.

Course goals

Given the above, what do I want to accomplish in this course?

First let me tell you what I hope to avoid: a course that is only about tools. This is an easy pitfall to stumble into. We could spend 16 weeks just comparing and contrasting MySpace and Facebook - and these are just two of the many, many tools that have educational potential.

So, my goals for you are as follows:

1. To develop a sense of what Web 2.0 is, theoretically and practically. I want you to have a 20k foot level perspective, as well as a "What do I do with my students on Monday?" perspective.


2. To put together a "tool kit" of free or very low cost tools that you and your students can use. You can literally outfit yourself with everything you need these days, from word processors, to paint programs, to video conferencing, all for free. I want you to be able to reach into your tool kit at will and pull out what you need.
   


3. To develop a sense of the different kind of communication tools (wikis, blogs, listservs, services like MySpace and Wikipedia) and what they are good for.


4. To develop a sense of information resources that exist, and how to manage them.
   


5. To find resources related to your content area and grade level.


6. To develop lesson plans that use Web 2.0 tools that you can use in your class.
   

An important goal I have set for myself is to use only free tools that you could use with your class. Thus, I don't want to use the discussion board in UAS Online (which is actually a Blackboard product) because you won't have access to it after this course and your students can't have access to it at all because they are not UAS students. So, I am trying Google Groups this semester. I have played with it and it seems to get the job done. And it is owned by Google who seems to be as permanent as gravity, death and taxes. Therefore, I think we can count on Google Groups being around and improving over time.

How you will communicate in this course

Each of you will communicate with the class in two ways. You will:

1. Contribute to class discussion through Google Groups
2. Maintain a personal blog as a portfolio (a blogfolio).

The idea here is that you will discuss things as a group, then "withdraw" to your portfolio to post your synthesis of the week's assignment. I am trying to combine the best of both worlds: group communication and personal reflection.