The Moss-Free Stone

Hoping to get some assistance from this session with arranging collaborative projects with district’s teachers. We have had only limited success to date. Presenters are Diane Midness (iEARN) and Sharon Betts.

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I have had to do several projects involving putting together examples of Web 2.0 use in our district in the past couple of weeks. I thought I would share a small sampling of them here. They might inspire others to give some of the tools a try.
Blogs
Talented Texans–elementary students sharing writing. Student interaction is constructive [...]

Thanks to John Pederson, again, for leading me to another great video (and to Scott McLeod for leading John to it!). This simple, black-and-white video paints a vivid, colorful portrait of the changing of society that is happening as a result of evolving technologies.

A couple of questions came to mind when viewing the video.

Has the [...]

Here is a short, well-crafted slideshow created by Sacha Chua, an enterprise 2.0 specialist with IBM. It lists some very practical steps to blogging effectively for work, including doing lots of reading, sharing knowledge through writing, and tooting one’s own horn, so to speak, by sharing successes and accomplishments. Great focus on how blogs can [...]

I recently reviewed Google Sites, the company’s wiki tool. The site previously was an enterprise-only tool, meaning you had to be a member of a domain, such as a school district or company, to join. As of last Wednesday, the tool is open to anyone, meaning students can now create their own wikis. If you [...]

The school year will be drawing to a close on Thursday. As we meet as an Instructional Technology team tomorrow, I feel it is important to evaluate where we have been, where we are now, and where we hope to go in the future. The year began with high expectations for teacher learning, student learning, [...]

Thanks to my Twitter friends, I recently found Weblin, a social networking site that has a different approach. Weblin users download a small piece of software that enables them to create a personal avatar that bears a resemblance to a Second Life character. Once activated, the avatar is present at the bottom of the browser [...]

I used the Google Documents survey tool to create a brief survey over the use of Internet tools by educators in our district. Seventy teachers responded. The survey turned out as expected, generally, with a few surprises. Some of the results:
Time spent online away from work:

31% <2 hours
37% 2-5 hours
16% 5-10 hours
16% [...]

For any educators out there who like the idea of Web 2.0 and recognize its importance, but are too intimidated or otherwise reluctant to dive right in, I offer the following list of 5 things to try first. I think these tools will give you an idea of how simple it is to create online [...]