Getting Started with Web 2.0

[sharleen berg]

Our school is new to Web 2.0; none of us has used any of the collaborative tools available with our students. There must be many more of you out there like us who are looking for a place to start.

Please contribute to this discussion if you can offer resources for entry level Web 2.0 users, i.e., cyber-safety, necessary permission forms, sample lessons, parent education or the "do's and don'ts of launching collaboration.

[Julie Lindsay]

Sharleen this is a great discussion to start and foster. One of the latest resources I came across last week is called '21 Lunges'. It is a website with 21 tutorials created by librarians from RMIT in Victoria, Australia (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University). Their website http://21lunges-rmit.blogspot.com/ provides a series of links that takes you through Web 2.0 tools and provides lots of interesting resources and links. I like the approach they have taken in preparing this as you can lunge once a week or once a day if you like, in other words take it at your own pace. I am keen to use this with our teachers in Qatar, or maybe adapt the concept....small bites at a time.

[sharleen berg]

Julie thank you for that resource. Programs like "21 Lunges" really do provide a comfortable place to learn about Web 2.0. Prior to attending the Flat Classrooms conference I started a similar program through our state library network: "23 Things on a Stick." Without the introduction to Web 2.0 this program offered I would have been lost at the conference. My Web use went from email-only to developing the assigned blog (in a short amount of time).

The tutorials are so well done it doesn't take long to reach a comfortable level of understanding. Your idea to use this as a model for teacher training is a good one.

[Kimberly Fradale]

Hi Sharleen, Julie, and Anne: Thanks for the suggestions! I have started on "21 Lunges" and played with "wordle." I really feel like a fish out of water when it comes to web 2.0 stuff, so these sites were great places to begin.

[Marie Coppolaro]

21 Lunges is a great list, some new things there I haven't come across before. Anne, you mentioned resizing images for online use. Can you clarify what size you would recommend for uploading images?

[Linda Mercer]

I'm happy to learn about 21 Lunges (GREAT name, btw!) as well as the other links listed here. My school is just barely wading into this ocean, but I have found that starting small, with one focused project (or perhaps two) will help eliminate the response that this is all too overwhelming. I have created a wiki about web 2.0 for our teachers (I am a middle and high school librarian at a small independent school in St. Louis) and am working with a 7th grade Spanish teacher on a wiki for his 7th grade students. Find one teacher that is excited and see what happens! I like the concept of parent education as well. That is something to think about. Have you created any programs for parents?

[Marie Coppolaro]

Sharleen, just to add, if this is helpful please use any of the the resources: in my post I have written about how we started and there are links to mission statement and code of conduct.

Extract below is from a question answered by other educators re class blogging.
As far as safety goes, there are lots of resources out there that may help. On all of our later blogs, we have included a set of rules that you can access and copy at http://mrpbps.globalstudent.org.au/the-rules-rule/ . The Commonwealth government cyberquoll site http://www.cyberquoll.com.au/hub.htm is also worth a look at. As far as Copyright goes the smartcopy site http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/allright/index.htm is well worth a look at especially to yourself and you might also like to consider the copyright for kids linked on my test blog http://mrpbps.globalstudent.org.au/ .

To get some idea of the other tools, and which it is in things it you can use to spice up your blog, you might like to have a look at http://saltysolutions.pbwiki.com/ and http://projectingpassionately.pbwiki.com/FrontPage which both have short discussions and examples of a range of other add-ins some of which Anne has mentioned in her post.

Hope this helps.