home



=**//Wikis and Podcasts and Blogs, Oh My! or, How to Become a Wizard in Web 2.0//**=

Presented by the Westminster Web 2.0 Strike Force (Chris Bishop, Annie Kubler, Clark Meyer, Penney Sconzo, and Jere Wells)

The World Wide Web has been one of the most powerful transformative forces of the modern era. We now buy and sell online, get our news online, communicate with friends and family online, and, increasingly, learn online. Not only have web users and web sites increased at a staggering rate, but so have the new tools for making the most of the web's vast resources.

But with names like wiki, NING, Flickr, and blog, the tools can initially seem esoteric and intimidating. While their use is actually much simpler than earlier applications, which often required the ability to write programming code, there are indeed some new skill thresholds required. In short, the World of the Web can still make one feel, as Dorothy says, that "we're not in Kansas anymore."

The goal of this tutorial is to de-mystify this new landscape and introduce teachers to some of the more common and useful tools that educators are increasingly using to make their teaching--and their own learning--more informed, engaging, and fun, while also helping students learn essential 21st century technology skills. It is important to address up front one myth: that today's students naturally learn these skills and thus do not need formal instruction. To be sure, social networks like Facebook and media resources like YouTube are almost second nature to teenagers today, but their use of these tools represents only a fraction of the web-based landscape that lies before them. Teachers still have a vital role to play in helping them develop a fluid, confident mastery of an ever-widening set of technological tools. How much you incorporate Web 2.0 learning and teaching tools into your own practice is ultimately up to you. Their usefulness can differ by academic discipline and age group. But one thing is for sure: it is almost imposssible to make informed judgments about their usefulness if you don't have the basic literacy.

How to Become a Wizard in Web 2.0 will teach you using the very web-based tools that you will learn. In each lesson, you will both read from the web and write to the web, and by the end you will have a personal comprehesive web site that will contain your own samples and links for a variety of Web 2.0 tools. If you are taking this web-based tutorial independently, you can proceed at your own pace. At the end we provide a helpful resource page with useful problem-solving tips, but there is also a help line, where you can e-mail us with questions or concerns.

But again, we recognize that for many this process can feel very new and disorienting, so let's have some fun, too. The title of the tutorial reflects an interesting analogy: that the World of the Web can be like the Land of Oz, and that we are perhaps like Dorothy and her traveling companions, each on a quest to acquire something of vital importance. Of course, the comparison has limited validity, but perhaps no other work of American fiction has been subject to so much speculation about its allegorical significance: was L. Frank Baum's original a subtle political satire? Did Pink Floyd actually compose //Dark Side of the Moon// as a trippy soundtrack for the film? Relax and have a good time on your own journey along a Yellow Brick Road as you develop some of the Web 2.0 Wizard's skills.



Lessons 1. "Oh, I Can Tell You Why": Just What is Web 2.0? 2. Totally Wicked Wikis: The New Collaborative Learning Tool 3. Tooting Your Horn in the 21st Century with Blogs and Podcasts 4. Audio-Visual Wizardry: Flickr and Voice Thread 5. Organizing the Flying Monkeys: Del.icio.us and RSS 6. Extending The Possibilities: Google Earth and Google Maps