Reflections on Learning About Web 2.0

For the past 4 months we have been immersed in Web 2.0 learning. This experience has been like being thrown into a new culture with a new language and customs to learn. As I start my thoughts are like the leaves blowing in this great windstorm we are having. 

Picture from Flickr - "The Commons" 

They are all over the place and this blog will try to calm that wind allowing me to catch those leaves and put them in nice neat piles, explaining the learning that has occurred over this period of time. Not an easy task at all!!! 

Highlights and Lowlights of My Learning

I think that for me the highlight was all of the new learning that I was able to accomplish. I used to be quite “up with technology”. In a former job I was a technology coordinator for a small school division and at that time was the guy that everyone turned to with all things technology. As such I had to know at least a little about all sorts of “internet stuff”. I then changed jobs and have been away from that for that past 5 years. There have been a lot of things that I have heard about (most of the things studied in this class) that I did not have the time to explore and learn about. This class gave me that chance to familiarize myself with those things and I now have a renewed confidence to talk, at least somewhat knowledgeably about these things.

While the new learning was a high the low that went along with that was the high demand on time that was required from this class. I found that within a week we had to read about in texts and follow along to explore sites in a trailfire to gain background knowledge. We then also had to try out a new application and tie together all of the learning in the week. That often resulted in very busy weeks working in the evenings and most of the weekend. Just as one would end another would be waiting to start up. It was a lot more work and commitment of time than many of the other online classes I have taken along my journey towards a Masters Degree but as I said, all of the new learning was a highlight as well.

In terms of the specific tools we looked at I felt that some of them had a better fit than others to my world. In particular I really enjoyed using blogger. I find that RSS is a great tool and thus was another highlight. Podcasting has some great potential in schools. I was impressed with the ease at which you could create a podcast using a free program such as Audacity. I would have to say that trying Twitter was a bit of a low point for me. It was my second try at using this tool and I was disappointed to find that I still did not “get it” after giving it a real good try. I have not given up and with a bit of help from my friends may “get it” eventually. I will talk more about that later in this post.

Future Plans

As I have mentioned earlier, the highlight of this course for me was being able to learn about and use many of the newer tools from Web 2.0. I feel that I am just slowly getting caught up to the rest of the world. I want to continue to learn about these tools and also keep on top of new tools as they come out. In order to continue to learn about them I will need to use them on a daily basis. Right now I use blogger, RSS and Delicious regularly. I will continue this. I will need to edit and streamline my RSS feeds to make them more targeted and manageable.

For many of the other applications, I will need to revisit and try to put them to more use now that I have some extra time. For example I have not had a chance to revisit Flickr and upload my library of pictures. That may be a summer project. I would also like to explore and use podcasting a lot more with my job. I want to try out Second Life. This was not a specific topic of this course but it came up several times. I keep hearing about the great opportunity that exists with the use of Twitter. As I was reviewing classmates blogs I read in Brad’s Twitter blog (March 29, 2010) about three twitter applications that I want to try out. I think that if I was to have greater access to seeing and responding to tweets I may be able to make greater use of the tool. He suggests trying TweetDeck, TwitterGadget and Twitterrific. I am particularly interested in trying Twitterrific with my blackberry to see how effective that can be.

I am currently a curriculum coordinator so I do not have any one classroom where I can try out and integrate these technologies in my classroom with students. I can however model their use and use these tools to help with professional development of teachers. An example of this would be to create a curriculum blog. The blog could be a venue for creating awareness and interest in learning about Web 2.0 tools. Teachers could be kept informed about news relating to curriculum along with Web 2.0 applications. They could be encouraged to try them out and then look for ways to incorporate them into their classrooms. Twitter could also have a similar professional development application if I could get all of our teachers using it on a regular basis.

When it comes to deciding which tools to share with colleagues, I find it difficult to decide. I think that each of us in this small class would place different values on the various tools based on their personal perspective. As such I see value in all of the tools we have explored and individual teachers will also have their own values that they will place on each tool. I feel that teachers need to be first be made aware of the tools and try them out personally to develop a comfort level with their use. Once that is established they will be the best at deciding how and if they can be used in their own classrooms.

There can be benefit to our education system from using all of the tools we have explored. I see immediate and effective applications in classrooms to tools such as blogging (Blogger), photosharing (Flickr), podcasting (Audacity and Voice Thread), video sharing (YouTube), social bookmarking (Delicious), and wikis. On the other hand, I see many of the tools we used having a greater fit with personal use than in schools. In this group I would put applications such as Facebook and Twitter.

I have recently had some responsibilities added to my job. I am now responsible for e-learning in our division. A big part of this role will be providing professional development on the use of many of these tools. I like the learning model that this class used to develop the skills and learning about these tools and will try to form our professional development in a similar style. Teachers need to be able to enter the learning where ever they are and go in the directions that they personally need. Teachers are being asked to provide this type of differentiated learning for their students so we should also model it with professional development opportunities.

The future of education has been described by Richardson (2009) and Davies (2009) in their final chapters. Richardson points out that as students move into future jobs they will be asked to work collaboratively with others from around the world to “create content for diverse and wide ranging audiences. Compare that with an education system that, by and large, asks those same students to work independently for a narrow audience (usually the teacher).” (p. 130). He talks about “Big Shifts” that must occur in classrooms to adapt. Davies (2009) also has a similar vision but she sees it being a bit more difficult to achieve. She suggests that teachers “initial reaction is to seek for ways of using new technologies within the context of existing practices.” (p. 104)

There are many roadblocks that exist to reaching this vision. Among the challenges are negative attitudes to change. These attitudes come from several sources including teachers, administrators (school and division), technical experts and parents. Another roadblock is the reality that hardware and internet infrastructure in all of our schools and especially in our rural schools is often quite lacking. We do not have enough computers, they are often inadequate to run these applications and to complicate things our internet bandwidth is challenged.

I came across an interesting slideshow from A Teacher's Guide To Web 2.0 at School by drmaryannbell@slideshare.net(drmaryannbell).

This presentation shows results of surveys conducted between 2008 and 2010 regarding filtering and Web 2.0 access in K-12 schools. I have included as a separate blog post directly below this one.  It is interesting to see the extent of blocking and the rational for it. This would not be much different than my school division.

Another reference to this resistance comes from David Warlick’s, 2 Cents Worth blog It Was Good Enough for Me. In this blog he talks about these challenges but provides 5 suggestions for dealing with them. This will be helpful to me as another future role I see for myself is to be an advocate for the inclusion of Web 2.0 tools in our schools.

Key Learning’s From Classmates

Learning in this class was not restricted to books, internet etc but was certainly enhanced by the interactions with all of the classmates. This was facilitated by the discussions on the course site as well as by linking to each others blogs and applications. There are many examples of things that I learned from my classmates. A couple of the key things I learned from others in the class are highlighted below.

1. When we were learning about Flickr Karen Burkett created a photostream with her pictures. This provided me with an example of how photos could be shared with “friends”.  Thanks for that Karen.
2. Another source of help when trying to figure out Flickr was the Mel Varga post.  He noted “The site noted below was mentioned in Chap. 7 of the Richardson text. Check out getting to know flickr (basic) video
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/265279980/” This video as well as the other links within the site was very helpful in learning more about flickr. Thanks Mel!
3. Bradlee McDiarmid suggested to use a site called VoiceThread to upload my MP3 files to and then use that site to create links to the files in my blog. This was very helpful in moving me forward when I was stuck. Also I referenced Brad’s advice regarding Twitter apps earlier in this post. Thanks Brad!
4. Throughout the class I have kept in touch with Rob. We have had several classes together in the past as part of the same cohort for the MES program. We both were taking this class in conjunction with another class and thus it was a lot of work and challenging to find time to do it all. The discussions with Rob throughout the semester helped both of us successfully handle the workload. Thanks for all of the help Rob!
5. Nancy and Pauline sent me an email with birthday greetings on Facebook. Not only did I discover that Nancy and I share a birthday but it was my first connection with classmates on my Facebook account. Thanks Nancey and Pauline!

These are just a few examples of how my classmates influenced my learning in this class. I did not mention everyone in these examples but I certainly could have. Thanks to all of my other classmates not mentioned here as well.

Reflection on the Process

As I mentioned earlier the class was a lot different than I had expected. I was not sure what to expect but found that the class really was jammed pact with work and learning. Right from the start we were introduced to this new learning style. I recall those early weeks becoming familiar with the course website, struggling to find my way around including finding how to link to my new blog site, creating the new blog, reading the text and going through the trailfires. Wow there was a lot to get familiar with.

It did not take long to realize that I had to work consistently throughout the week in order to be able to keep up with the pace of the class. I recall the relief I had (which was shared by all my classmates) when Joanne announced that she was dropping the second assignment from our requirements. Although this would have added additional learning opportunities it would have added a lot of stress to our lives and I feel that I was able to meet my learning expectations for the course this way.

I also recall my concerns early in the class regarding sharing any information about myself. When I would sign up to sites required for the course I was very hesitant to use my real name and information. I suppose this fear has developed over the years from hearing rumors, stories, and advice about keeping your personal information private. This notion was in conflict however with the theme of sharing in social websites. I have found that as time went along in the class I was more comfortable sharing more information about myself than at the start of the course. I am still not sure what an appropriate level of sharing is and will only find that with time and experience.

As we started signing up for more and more sites it became difficult to keep track of things if I was using different names for everything. We had some discussion on the course site about how each of us was handling this and I settled on creating a document in word that I keep all my site information. As I signed up for sites I would record and save the pertinent information here. I also started to be consistent with things such as user names from site to site.

The learning of so many different things was aided in that all of the social networking sites have similar look and feel to them. Before long it did not seem so overwhelming to learn new tools. Every week we were introduced to a new tool. I found that each week I signed up for something new and set out learning about it. The week of immersion allowed me to develop a level of awareness and knowledge that will allow me to explore further in the future and feel confident as we finish this class.

Although it seemed like we had more sources of information and learning than we could consume in a week we were encouraged to do additional research. I found that much of the additional research I found using the U of A library databases and Google scholar a bit. This may have seemed like a lot of extra work but much of the things we were learning about in the week were greatly enhanced by doing this additional reading and research.

Finally I would just like to comment on my growth as a blogger. I would like to think that I have developed as a blogger over the course of the semester. The discussions regarding finding our blogging voice was very interesting and I think we have all found that voice. The interesting thing about blogs is that you have a chronological record of your growth. You can go back to see what you did in February and compare it to the work now. It is no wonder that marks in this area have improved with time.

Another aspect of blogging that I like is that it is a permanent record of the course work. With most of the classes I have taken the work and the learning pretty much stops at the end of the course. That is not the case with this course at all. I will continue to work at this and keep adding to my blog. The topic may change but I will not be “throwing out my notes” at the end of this course.

Thank you to all that have helped throughout the course. A special thank you to Joanne for you guidance and expertise and to the way that you have structured this course. It is definitely a course I would recommend to others.

References

Davies, J & Merchant, G. (2009). Web 2.0 for schools learning and social participation, New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

                                                           

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. 2nded. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=2346

http://www.slideshare.net/drmaryannbell/son-of-mr-gatekeeper-tear-down-those-walls