home

Educational Technology Center srahn@kennesaw.edu**
 * Stephen Rahn - Kennesaw State University

=What is the world is Web 2.0??= This is a tough question with many answers. Essentially, it refers to the new way the Internet is being used for interactive purposes. Blogs, wikis, podcasting, RSS, and YouTube would be just a few of the things that are considered Web 2.0 applications. Web browsers today have many more capabilities today that just showing us static content, so this has facilitated a richer user experience on the Internet.

[|Watch some great Web 2.0 Videos Here]

=What are blogs?= You probably already know that blog is short for "web log." People began keeping online journals about 10 years ago, and they have evolved into what we now called blogging. Blogging can be done about any topic you want. In education, blogs are being used for a variety of purposes, most notably in the area of writing. In fact, here is [|a link to a dissertation] that was recently done about blogging in education. If 283 pages is too much for you to read, here is [|a link to the 8-page summary.]

Can I use blogging with my students safely?
Yes you can! If you are interested in doing a blogging project, I highly recommend [|The Class Blogmeister.] The site is only for teachers, and a teacher must approve any student posting or comments before they are allowed to be published to the site. If you would like to see a good example of a teacher who has been using this site for a while, [|head over to this page]. This is a 3rd grade class in Seattle.

=What is a Wiki?= Wiki is a Hawaiian word meaning "quick" or "fast." Basically, a wiki is a web page that can be easily edited in a web browser. No special programming skill is needed. It works just like a word processing program, except the page is stored on the Internet. The power of a wiki is that multiple people can be given permission to edit the page (if that's what you want) and the page can be a powerful collaborative tool. Changes to the page are logged, and you can restore the page to an earlier version if you want.

What about Wikipedia?
Wikipedia has been the source of great deal of controversy, with good reason. Since everybody can edit the articles, there is great potential for incorrect of unfairly biased information. Wikipedia's founder (Jimmy Wales) says that the service and its community are built around a self-policing and self-cleaning nature that is supposed to ensure its articles are accurate. In fact, [|a 2005 study showed] that Wikipedia compared favorably to Encyclopedia Britannica in covering scientific topics.

My recommendation is not to ignore or ban Wikipedia completely, but rather to use it as a starting point. Good Wikipedia articles list their sources at the end, so verify them or have your students do that.

=What is RSS?= RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a way for you to be able to subscribe to web content without having to visit the same web pages every day. RSS requires that you have two things...a reader (or aggregator) and content feeds from the web sites to which you want to subscribe. Popular Readers are:
 * [|Google Reader]
 * [|Bloglines]
 * [|NewsGator]

Once you have set up an account with one of the Readers, you need to find some content. Most blogs and news sites have feeds available. Look for a button that looks something like this:

The orange button is actually linked to the URL for the feed. You need to copy the URL for the feed and paste it into your Reader. Your Reader will allow you to create a folder or category for the feed, so you can stay organized.

Here is [|a link to some feeds] I put together using Bloglines.

=What's the Deal with Podcasting?= Podcasting is simply a way of recording something and making that recording easily available on the web. People sometimes incorrectly think that you have to have an iPod in order to create or listen to a podcast, but that is not the case.

In order to create a podcast, you will need a microphone, a device onto which you can record, software to edit the recording, and a way to get the podcast delivered to your audience. The most common way to deliver a podcast is through a web site. You can also create podcasts that are available to others by using iTunes.

One of the most common pieces of software for recording and editing podcasts is [|Audacity]. Once the podcast has been edited, it can be further "cleaned up" by using another free program called [|The Levelator].

Here is a link to [|the past 3 years of podcast recordings] from the Georgia Educational Technology Conference.

And here is [|a link to podcasts created and recorded] by the KSU ETTC staff.

=What About Google?= Google is much more than a search engine. It has evolved into a suite of web applications that are very much a part of Web 2.0. Here are some of the things they do:
 * [|Google Reader]
 * [|Google Calendar]
 * [|Google Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations]
 * [|Google Notebook]
 * [|GMail]

Here is a [|Google Notebook Example]that I created back in May for a training I did at GHS.