Sue Waters

This week I am writing a series on posts on the use of Web 2.0 with students for e-learning and I had promised to write about use with students today (looks like this series is going to continue into next week). But Kate reminded me that not everyone knows what Web 2.0 is! Which is really funny because I am very careful using terms like blogs, wikis and Web 2.0 since to a beginner you make them feel like you are an ALIEN! [Image by davezilla]

Apologies to all my readers — I made a bad assumption that if you read my blog you already know what Web 2.0 is and worse still you knew why we should be using it! Oops!!! And let me define Web 2.0 simplistically as web based tools that facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.

Why do I use Web 2.0 tools with my students? Never before have we been able to collaborate and exchange ideas with a global audience on such a scale and achieve such innovation and knowledge gain!

Here are just a few examples of my gains from collaborating using Web 2.0 tools:

• I participated in the 31 Day Project to Build a Better Blog with a community of 14 global people and we all found greater gain working in a team, because each individual saw a different perspective of the task – giving participants greater “food for thought!” At the end of the Project we set up a Building a Better Blog Community at Ning to continue collaborating and the community has continue to expand rapidly providing us all with even greater knowledge gain.
• Michele’s modeling of how she set up the community inspired me to form etools and tips community for educators which has increased my collaboration with Australian educators
• My Twitter community provides with my assistance from parenting advice (e.g. Question= is it appropriate to buy a present if a child finishes a book. Answer = NO! then it implies reading is a chore!) to meeting my students (e.g. Question from an American = what is the best thing about Australia Answer = Vegemite! which resulted in an all day discussion on vegemite) to providing teaching assistance (e.g. this morning I joined Darren Draper’s social software class…they were in Utah, USA)

There is no way I could know as much as I do without collaborating and sharing with others on a global scale! This is now! This is our future! I have gain so much and I want the same for my students. And this is a skill we should be empowering our students with!

If you are confuse with what’s it all about join us at etools and tips community for educators and you can experience it for yourself!

FINAL POINT

Why not tell us how you benefit from using Web 2.0 tools (by leaving a comment on this post)? And tell us which ones are your favourite?