My Web 2.0 Journey and Beyond

Reflecting on The Process

Since the beginning of  September I have been on a Web 2.0 learning journey and now it is time to pause and reflect to see how far I have come. As I think back on the whole process there are many "ah ha" moments, major reoccurring themes, and patterns to my learning that I would like to share. 

Learning By Doing

After 12 weeks of blogging I feel that I had an opportunity to discover my academic blogging voice, understand the importance of  "a hook", and develop an understanding of audience.  Blogging isn't just about putting your ideas and reflections down, it is a craft. This craft was not easy to master and I thought it was going to get easier as the term progressed but it continued to be a weekly challenge. I had to immerse myself in research and current practices, think critically about the information I consumed , and then I had to synthesize what I learned and apply it to my role as a teacher-librarian, learning leader, and lifelong learner. The biggest challenge was to pull it all together and capture the "big idea" to entice my readers. 

I felt that my blogging learning journey allowed me to get into my student's shoes (Ganley, 2004) and experience the entire blogging process from the perspective of a student. I am more conscious of creating opportunities and challenging my students to think critically about the content they are creating, reflect on their learning and relate their new understandings to their life, and to analyze their writing voice.  I also have a newfound respect  for the hundreds of educational bloggers that keep up a weekly blog that entices readers from around the world to subscribe.

Starbucks, Scaffolding, and Web 2.0

In William Kist's book, The Socially Networked Classroom" he explains social media in education using the sizes of Starbucks coffees: Short, Tall, Grande, and Venti. In the "short" chapter he talks about social networking in a low-tech environment, "tall" social networking in a medium tech enviornment, "grande" social networking in a high-tech environment, and "venti" social networking in an unlimited tech environment. This book has been a "go to" manual for me over the past year. But, it has only been at the end of this course that I have really come to understand the significance of the Starbucks analogy. Depending on the day, the people or students that we are working with, our school division's mandates, and our own personal comfort level will determine what "we order."  As I continue to work with students and staff I must remember to start at their level and as they get more comfortable it will be simply a small transition to the next level.

photo © 2005 Esparta Palma | more info (via: Wylio)
In our EDES 501 class we have a wide variety of learners, and we all came to this class at different points in our career and understandings of Web 2.0. Interestingly enough, we were all able to learn and extend our understanding about Web 2.0 tools for schools and libraries. As I reflect back on the sequence of the blog posts: photosharing, videosharing, social bookmarking, podcasting, wikis, presentation/multimedia and sharing sites, social networking, twitter and blogs, I realize that the web 2.0 tools were scaffolded. to ensure success for all.

For those students new to web 2.0 tools the structure of this course was designed accordingly.  Each tool required the prior knowledge gleaned from the tool before, to be applied to the next. For example, if you didn't know how to upload, save, and organize pictures videosharing would have been very difficult because many videos are created using pictures. Similar to our classrooms, we must be aware of the prior knowledge that our students bring to their learning and scaffold the activities accordingly.

After the first assignment I was a bit frustrated. I had been using Flickr for quite a few years in my personal life and my current school division is a bit wary of some tools being used in an elementary school setting. As I looked down the list of blog posts I did not notice anything that was new or unfamiliar to me so I really wondered how I was going to "learn anything new." This was a rather humbling experience because I soon realized that it is impossible to know everything about web 2.0. The tools are changing constantly, some don't last, and there is always something to learn if you actively seek it out. Each week I was blown away by my new discoveries. For example, even though I had been on twitter for a year I found many new tips such as how to share resources, organize my friends, and how to get involved in various chat sessions to enhance my twitter experience.  

Web 2.0 and Participatory Learning

My experiences as a learner in the 1990's and even during University in the early 21st century were far different than my experiences in the TLDL program in 2010. This observation has become evident over the course of the last four months. My participation in this class over the last 12 weeks has given me the opportunity to: post, comment, exchange and share information such as tags, files, audio, text, and pictures and to stay connected and participate with my peers and other educators on blackboard, twitter, e-mail, second life, flickr, and RSS feeds. I have experienced what it means to be a part of the participatory culture. According to Lemke (2010) "Participatory culture is reflected in today's economic globalization. Multinational corporations in particular epitomize participatory culture, where the success of an individual is directly tied to the success of the teams within which they work....this is indicative of web 2.0 participatory culture where the power lies in the quality, frequency, expertise, backgrounds, and commitment of the participants" (p.265).  My big learning from this course was how web 2.0 is truly about participation. What you put in is what you get.  Almost all of the new knowledge I gleaned, presentations I shared, and new understandings were a result of other people sharing their knowledge and expertise with me. Most of what I embedded and shared was created by someone else and I stumbled across it in my research or RSS feeds. It is all about sharing, creating, and collaborating.

What I learned From Members of My Class

This evidence of a participatory culture was also displayed through our group. It was always fun to read the blog posts of the other members of my class. We all have so many different perspectives and knowledge to bring forward.  Heather Ohashi introduced me to Google Search Stories. This has become  a part of my presentation toolkit  and it is an excellent way to get students thinking. After our TL group attended the School Library Journal's summit on The Future of Reading we presented our new knowledge and understanding to the group. The following questions guided our presentation.



Another tool that has become my "go to" for creating pathfinders is Jog The Web  ,and I came across this after reading Yvonne's blog. Just the other day I created a pathfinder on the Periodic Table.

Last but not least I learned about a few new groups to follow in Twitter from Franki Sibberson. Franki introduced me to #titletalk and #engchat. Over the past few weeks I have added a lot of books to my amazon wish list and have a network that I can ask advice for what books to buy next for my library.

The Ups and Downs Of Learning


Lowlights

One lowlight of my learning was the frustration of some of the tools coming and going, not working, not an option in our division, and not having enough bandwidth to make them work. I was quite excited when I discovered only2clicks and after embedding it into our virtual classroom and testing it out, I realized that it would only allow 8 students on the page at a time. I found this to be a bit bizarre and tried to contact only2clicks but I was not able to find any contact information. I learned an important lesson. Before you get to the "finishing touches" stage, try out the tool to see if it can do what you need it to do. This was a very important lesson to learn.

Highlights
I really have come to understand that the world of Web 2.0 can include everyone. Adults, Kindergarten students, my Functional Life Skills students, and even grandparents. In order for a tool to be useful, there must be a purpose and reason to use it. The tool should enhance student learning and extend their learning in a way that was not possible before. The world of web 2.0 is inclusive and accepting of everyone.
 Future Plans

 Classroom

 Over the past few months I have been working a lot with a special programmer at our school. We are very fortunate to be one of the two schools in our division to have a Functional Life Skills classroom. The teacher and I have been working together to create projects and opportunities for the students. They often use the smartboard and to make surfing the net easier we created, with them, a only2clicks page. This page houses all of their favourite websites and information. Our school has been fortunate enough to receive 5 Kodak zi8 flip cameras and we are hoping to be able to record some of the stuedents thinking and reactions to their learning. We are currently working on Text to Text, Text to Self, and Text to World connections. To be able to record their connections and excitement about some of the picture books and to share this with their parents would be absolutely transformational. We have a variety of options available to us on how to upload and share the videos. We have also discussed the possibility of creating a wiki that would act as a portfolio. This teacher has also expressed an interest in following some special education bloggers. I have been compiling a list, thanks to some of the #speced tweeters this has not been a difficult process.  I have also started researching about web 2.0 and special education, but at this point there is not an awful lot out there. Therefore, I  started following special education bloggers and have added the #speced chat to my TweetDeck. I look forward to thinking outside of the box and considering ways in which our students in the FLS classroom can collaborate, share, and learn outside the four walls of the classroom.  

Library and School

Since our library homepage is through our school division portal we are limited in our options. Currently my virtual library includes links to the library schedule, a link to destiny our catalogue, a shelfari of the new books, voicethreads about students talking about books, and an embedded only2clicks page that has  failed miserably. My purpose for the only2clicks was that it was a visual pathfinder for my students. I organized it into the following categories: digital citizenship, copyright free images and sounds, search engines, reference K-4, reference 5-8, digital storytelling, and e-books. I recognize the importance of our students having a pathfinder created and a space where they can quickly access tools and important links. Therefore, I have decided to create a wiki to house all of this information. I will have three wiki's all feeding to the same one through a glogster on the main page. A page for the students, staff, and the parents. Watch for it soon.

Professional Development


I will continue to frequent my RSS feeds, which really grew over the past four months, and I hope to be a more active participant on twitter rather than a lurker.  Web 2.0 has offered immense opportunities for learners to engage in professional development. For example, I have signed up for a Webinar on Ebook File Formats and How They Effect You.  An area that I hope to become more familiar with is e-books and gaming in the library. I have ordered a few new books that I hope will broaden my understanding and will continue to follow and read posts to extend my learning. 

What Tool Do I Want To Share

 As I considered what tool that I wanted to share with my students and staff I remembered the advice of Anita Brooks Kirkland in her article Clearing the Fog About the Cloud: Some Relationship Advice. Brooks mentions the overwhelming feeling that many educators can relate to and provides an attempt to help educators clear the fog about the cloud with some technology and teaching relationship advice. When "flirting with web 2.0 technologies you might want to consider asking yourself some thought clarifying questions. Think of it as the ultimate online dating questionnaire" (CASL, 2010).

• Question 1: Are you interested in a long term relationship with this technology, or only a "one-class stand?"
• Question 2: Do you have fear of commitment?
• Is this the right match for me?
• Is this going to make me happy?
• How do I nurture this new relationship?

I think this is a great way to introduce and model to others how and what to consider when getting started with web 2.0 tools. I have been offering a monthly "Teacher Technology Tuesday" session and I am planning on introducing social bookmarking in the new year. My relationship with Diigo has far surpassed a one night stand and is an important tool to keep me organized and efficient. Diigo's commitment level is not daunting as you will only gain what you put in. There are numerous social bookmarking sites and I will be sure to share a wide variety of options so that teachers can find the right match for them. Lastly I think that introducing social bookmarking will make many teachers happy because they will become more efficient and organized. I feel that the last question applies more to me and I will be able to support and nurture their new relationship with social bookmarking. I will communicate with my staff and be open for questions, concerns or help. Social bookmarking can begin as a low level technology but has the ability to take teacher's learning to a whole new level with the ability to share and annotate. This is an excellent entry level tool that can allow teachers to become comfortable with technology, and they will be able to see immediate results.

The message that I hope to pass on to my students and staff is that it is not about the tools. We must continue to think beyond the tool. The tool doesn't matter, what matters is that our students become critical thinkers, and can communicate effectively. I will continue to consult the NETS and the AASL standards to drive and focus my thinking when planning instructional opportunities for students.    

The Future of Web 3.0

There were many times during this course that I thought about what was to come. Where were we going? What does the future look like for our students and education?  Even in the last 10 years there has been an explosion of Web 2.0. Where will we be in 5 years? 10? 25?

When I stumbled across this presentation on Judy O'Connell's blog Hey Jude  I realized what the future has in store and realized that we are currently building and working towards the world of 3.0.

eXtending the Web - New and Emerging Learning Technologies

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

References

Kist (2010). The Socially Networked Classroom. Teaching in the New Media Age. Thousand Oaks, CA" Corwin Press. 

Bellanca, J & Brandt, R (2010). 21st Century Skills:Rethinking How Students Learn. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.