Finito!

This has been a fantastic opportunity to sample all that Web 2.0 has to offer.  It has been unfortunate that my time spent on this discovery has been brief.  I have bookmarked most of the sites in my Diigo account and look forward to browsing through them when time permits.

Thank you for the chance to glimpse all there is on offer!

Audio books & downloadable media

I intend to buy an ebook reader soon (hopefully before the end of the financial year) to try it out.  I'm not sure if I will enjoy reading from a screen - guess I'm a bit old fashioned because I like the feel of a book in my hands and the physicality of turning the page.  Audio books will become part of our collection in the primary school and will be used to assist students that struggle with their reading.  The idea is that to listen and read may help them grasp concepts of narrative structure and the phonetics of the language.  Time will tell if the program works.

As a primary school library, I don't believe we will be investing in ebooks in the near future.  Students would need to purchase their own devices and that isn't likely to happen anytime soon, secondary schools and public libraries would have a different story to tell.  I am yet to investigate the detail of libraries and ebooks - issues such as the built-in redundancy of the books, how many loans etc. and whether it is more cost effective than carrying print versions, especially of popular titles.  It will be interesting to watch the developments.

YouTube and TeacherTube

Unfortunately YouTube is a blocked site at the school so we are unable to use it in a teaching or learning context.  I believe it can be useful in schools if it is used appropriately because it is a technology application that the student seem to relate to. If it was possible to link a task to a YouTube visual presentation it may give students more of an opportunity to grasp certain concepts or deconstruct some of the older images - such as 1970s TV commercials.  Same goes for TeacherTube, it is really just a matter of finding the time to explore, explore, explore.
A particularly good YouTube film was one from the U.S. from last year - can't find the link - but it was students from a school performing the Black Eyed Peas "I've Got a Feeling" but the words changed to "Gotta Keep Reading".  It was excellent...so good that the Victorian Education Department copied it for the launch of the Premier's Reading Challenge this year!  Yes, the power of YouTube. (and yes, these sites are bandwidth hogs...I've just used my monthly home allowance so my computer is sooooo slow).

Podcasts

I already subscribe to podcasts from 774 ABC (Jon Faine) and Radio Lab and my daughter subscribes to Hamish and Andy.  I find them a great way to catch up with interesting debates and discussions without locking you into a particular listening time - I can go for a walk, plug in and the time passes reallly quickly!  My lecturer at CSU using podcasts but in the form of a vodcast where there are visuals of lecture slides that accompany the audio - a great way to convey a message to distance students such as myself.
I have bookmarked the "15 podcasts to make you smarter" on Diigo and will get to them for sure when I have more time to explore.

Facebook and My Space

I heard recently that the Facebook community, by population, is the third largest 'country' in the world and I am a citizen. I created a Facebook page a while ago because I was interested to see how it worked.  I didn't put much in my profile, just schooling/university and miraculously, Facebook found me some 'friends".  The "friends" fell into two groups - people I had not seen nor heard from in 20 years or people I have never met.  Never mind, it was an interesting exercise.  I can see the allure of social networking for younger people.  The story on one of the sites about a student travelling to Budapest and using social networking as a research and contact tool is a very positive way of using sites such as Facebook or My Space.  Such sites do require users to have a degree of information literacy and understand that just because it is written, it is not necessarily true - the creation of false profiles undermines the trustworthiness of social networking tools.  In addition, users of social media need to be able to distinguish between the value of 'real' friends and 'cyber' friends.  If the perspective can be maintained and users are cautious, I believe social networking is a valuable and useful tool in todays increasingly 'cyber-connected' society. Although, I notice many businesses have Facebook and Twitter accounts, in addition to a website, and I often wonder why anyone would be going there, maybe I should have look and find out. 

Rollyo

I created a search engine for Sylvanian Families, my daughter collects these and, at short notice, it was the only thing that came to mind but I only had time to add two sites.  Link is below:

http://www.rollyo.com/editroll.html?sid=704643

I think Rollyo would be an interesting exercise for students to create their own search engines, under supervision of course.  Students could be engaged in a research project and given the task of creating a search engine relevant to a specified subject area.  An interesting tool to explore.

Wikis

Wikis are a tool that I have used in education mainly in the creation of pathfinders.  Using the curriculum as a guide I have created research pathfinders for the Grade 5 & 6 students for their humanities units.  Given time I will create more for the themes of Antarctica and the Human Body.  The advantage of using a wiki is that I can lock access to the information pages that I construct and students can join the wiki and add their work as additional pages.  This allows teams of students to collaborate and construct their own pages.  Being online, means that students have access to the web links on the pathfinder at both school and home.  I believe that the use of wikis is probably more suitable for a secondary school environment where students are (hopefully) more capable, independent information users and have a higher degree of information literacy.