Pulling it all together

It seems overwhelming to keep up with all the sources of information on web2.0. A post in Musings about librarianship by Aaron Tay entitled Aggregating Sources for Academic Research in a Web 2.0 World looks at this issue for academic research and offers a wide range of tools. While he talks about researchers in higher education, many of the same tools could be used by teachers and librarians for their own professional development and eventually by their students. I need to check out FriendFeed to see how it can pull things together.

Keeping track of all your tools

There are so many tools that can be used to connect with others on the web. As you begin to find and then narrow down the ones that you follow over time, you might want to look at some of the personalized start pages like iGoogle, NetVibes and PageFlakes to pull it all together in one place. I personally use iGoogle, but NetVibes has a nice feature that you can make a public page for others to see. This would allow you to create a personal page for your things and a public one either for teacher resources or for student resources. You can add different tabs for different types of users. I haven't used PageFlakes, but I have heard of librarians using it to create subject pages for their schools.

New resources on Web2.0 tools

I just "attended" an Elluminate session lead by Joyce Valenza and three other school librarians. There were many ideas and resources shared, but the two sites you have to check out are:

http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/

http://newtoolsworkshop.wikispaces.com/

Both offer excellent information on uses of Web2.0 tools in schools.

Digital Research Tools Wiki

This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively, organized by research activity. While it has many more sophisticated and commercial works, there are also a number of free, web-based tools that could have K-12 application.

http://digitalresearchtools.pbworks.com/

Getting Started in Blogging

One of the most important features of Web 2.0 is the ability to not just read what is posted on the web but also the chance to share one's own ideas with others and get feedback. Many of us may be following blogs for news, personal interest or professional development, but few of us are actually maintaining our own blog.

For most of us, it is uncomfortable at first to share our ideas with the world, but if we expect our students to do it, we have to first become comfortable doing it ourselves. For this class each person will have a blog to reflect on what we are doing in class, communicate with others in the class, and begin to develop their own ideas on how web 2.0 tools might be used in classrooms and libraries.

Image uploaded on April 3, 2007 by acroamatic: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/239/445631409_39f3506540.jpg?v=0 (Creative Commons license)