Article

An interesting article that I found was talking about Web 2.0 tools in education.

The three main types of Web 2.0 that the article discusses are wikis, blogs, and podcasts. I've had experiences with all three, but not necessarily in school.

I've used wikis in classes before; in one class we had to collaborate in groups to create a wiki page on a particular subject. In another class, we created a wiki page in place of writing a paper. While wikis can definitely be useful, it's quite a bit of work to create one for just one topic. Unless it's a big project, I don't really see it being that useful in classes on a regular basis. Some teachers use it to share information with their students, which might be the most useful. While wikis are supposed to encourage collaboration, only one person can edit it at once, where something like Google Docs allows everyone to participate at once.

Blogs were the next item discussed. This is obviously relevant here since we're utilizing Blogger. I think blogs can be useful in classes, depending on a subject. For an English class, it's definitely a nice tool. Students could even post papers or writings that they had to do and get feedback from classmates. It definitely can be used in certain classes and is a nice way for students to get feedback from others.

Podcasts were the last tool talked about. I've listened to podcasts in my spare time, but they generally were about topics that weren't related to school, but some of my outside interests. I have used Grammar Girl once in a while, but it's not something I've ever subscribed to. I think that podcasts are something that might become more popular in the future, as far as education is concerned. It could essentially be a lecture from a professor or teacher in the form of an mp3 file. Possibly, this could even be used for online classes where students don't meet face to face.