Understanding Web 2.0 Technologies

Many of you may be thinking, “What is Web 2.0″ and “Why change how we have taught for the past 5, 10, 20 or more years?”. Well, we are living in the 21st Century, and it is a very different world our children are growing up in, than what we grew up in. In Victorian government schools we need to prepare for the eventual deployment of the Ultranet (looking at term 3 2010 at this point in time), a government provided Learning Management System designed to encompass all areas of teaching, learning, assessment and reporting. This will require a huge shift in the way many teachers work, so by developing 21stC skills with Web 2.0 I am hoping we will have more teachers better prepared for its implementation.

Did you know that Google is the most popular and utilized search engine? This search engine overtakes YouTube!

But, how effectively does one use this search engine? Many a times, students and myself have tried searching for something and end up getting over 10 pages of unrelated websites. Key words and features like “” and +  are used, but still, it does not narrow the search down as much as I would like.

So how can I help myself and my students to refine the searches? Well, have a look at the poster below and see if this helps!

More posters like this are available from the Google for Educators site. If you have not checked this out, I suggest you do. Make it a priority – the tips you can learn will ultimately save you time and effort!

Recently, I came across Wordle which is a very useful literacy and ICT tool that allows you to create word clouds from text.

Words that describe the College

Some of the reasons for it’s popularity, as I have discovered when using it with my Year 9 class, is because:  

• it is very simple to use 
• a visual medium to present new language and concepts
• support prereading strategies – code breaking or text analysis tasks
• improves student’s vocabulary skills
• allows for individual personality’s- increase in student motivation and engagement

How to use Wordle?

Simply click on the create icon, paste or write in your text (if you want some words in your collection to be larger than others, simply type them in several times) and then, click on go. You can then edit the shape, the colours and the font in the cloud and even remove words you don’t like by right-clicking on them.

You will find the answers to some frequently asked questions about Blogging in the “FAQ questions about Blogging” tab at the top of this Blog.  If you have a new question, please send it via a comment to this post and the response will be posted on the FAQ page.

This site has been set up as a central repository of D.S.C blogs. It should grow quickly as people realise how easy and powerful it is to set up a blog. Speak to either Dianne, Androula or Mark if wish to have some more information.