T21-3 Stimulus

The term "web 2.0" has been over used and some people do not like the term. Perhaps this is why the heading here is The Read-Write Web. Perhaps a more helpful term might be the interactive web, or the social web but of course it is hard for a heading to say it all. Some people will tell us that the web began as an interactive community and strayed away from that concept during the dot-com boom. Irrespective of our view of the past, we all know that new online tools are changing the face of the web and this week we want to see how we can utilize some of these new tools to enhance learning.

1. Stimulus

Our first two resources will help us get a picture of what "web 2.0" is and a hint of what it means for education.
David Warlick's article A Day in the Life of Web 2.0 was written in 2006 when most teachers had never heard of the term. Read the article to get a feel for what web 2.0 could look like in a school.
This next article comprises 64 pages but fortunately, there is a good executive summary: Paul Anderson (2007) What is Web 2.0? Ideas, Technologies and Implications for Education. Please read the Executive Summary (p 2), the Conclusion (p 53), Educational recommendations (p 54), and Points for further debate (p 56). You may also be interested to see the brief section on page 52, "And web 3.0?"
The next two resources provide examples of "web 2" tools. There are lots of links from these pages and investigating them could take a long time but try and do a quick exploration and focus on the key terms such as wikis, blogs and podcasts. It might also help to check a few of the terms in Wikipedia.

• Lim, Janine (2007) The Read/Write Web: Blogs, Wikis, and MySpace. What Should a Teacher Do?
• Mirtschin, A. (2008) 20 Reasons Why Students Should Blog.
• Spectronics Blog, (2010) Creating your own Personal Learning Network – PLN Using Web 2.0 Tools.

Our final resource for this section is an iTunes video by Dr Reuben Peuntedura: TPCK and SAMR: Models for Enhancing Technology Integration (39 minutes). The models he describes will help us decide what to do with online tools. You may recall a video in week 1 in which Henderson and Torres talked about doing things different and doing different things. Puentedura developed this idea into a model he calls SAMR.

 

The SAMR model will be the focus of this week's blog.