Travel Diaries of a Web 2.0 Newbie

Sorry about the title – more Monty Python.

I initially was put off by the Classroom 2.0 site – found it too busy and cluttered and there was nowhere obvious for me to start exploring, so I decided to go through the Forums, Groups etc tabs. I found for some, there was not a lot of content and wondered if the site was possibly spread a bit thin over too many sections? Or maybe people need to devote themselves to fewer areas and make sure the discussions/contributions are more substantial or up-to-date? I wasn’t sure.

So I left, and looked at some of the other sites listed. After looking at a couple, again, I was a little disappointed with the amount of content. I did look at The Innovative Educator and although I felt I was gatecrashing a party (most people seemed to be from NY and a lot of the content seemed to be talking about local education issues and organisations), I found a useful discussion about Primary/Elementary teachers teaching Science and the problems that can arise.

I went back and looked at Classroom 2.0 again and spent quite a bit of time (!) giving it a much more thorough exploration – which Thing 22 did say it needed. Although I found a couple of interesting forums/groups with some discussion on issues I have been facing, I think I can only really see social networking sites as something I would use for my own professional development. At this stage I can’t see any function for use in my teaching that couldn’t be covered by using a wiki or a blog, for example. Maybe later. However, I did find an excellent video resource for providing my students with a more organised way of doing online research on a subject – I feel we often say, “Go and research xyz.”; give them no real guidance or training about how to do research online; and then moan when we get back a lot of plagiarised work. I may use this video with a couple of my classes and insist they try the method for a while, at least.

I appreciate this type of input from other teachers that social networking sites provide and I like being able to “talk” with others at my convenience and when I have had the time to mull things over and properly formulate what I want to say. Like finding blogs and podcasts, I suspect that finding the right social networking sites for me may be a matter of trial and error.