Web 2.0: What's It Good For?

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me what is Web 2.0...

I always answer with the usual suspects; collaborative, communicative, creative, etc. But I never really feel satisfied with my answer. I always feel like there's something I'm not touching on. I threw the question out on Twitter today and below are the responses I got.

What are your thoughts?

What's In Your Family Tree?

A great way to help students understand character analysis is to have them create a family tree. This can be done with historical characters (King Henry VIII) or fictional characters (Harry Potter). Family-Mingle is an app for creating family trees. It's a great (free, of course) app, and the educational value is when you bring it into the classroom and have students contribute and build the same tree. In this segment from PalmBreezeCAFE, I show you how I would use it to teach Romeo and Juliet where each student would contribute to the family tree as a different character.

What do you think?



Click here to subscribe to all the PalmBreezeCAFE segments in iTunes.

Where Have All The Bloggers Gone?

Let's face it, blogging is not rocket science. Everyone has something to say (just spend some time in the back row of a faculty meeting). So, why is it that there are SO many educators, but so few EduBloggers? Is it too intimidating from a technology standpoint? or perhaps it comes down to being in Jen Wagner's Land of YeahButz, with lots of excuses (many of which are very valid)?

Don't you think we need a few more diverse bloggers out here? If you take a look at most blogrolls, you'll see the same names. Not that there's anything wrong with the blogs that are listed. Most are awesome blogs that I read as well. My point is though that we run the risk, if we haven't already, of becoming a huge echo-chamber. It's great fun and sometimes stimulating, but there are many thoughts out there that haven't been made digital yet.

There's this site called Posterous where anyone can blog if they can send an email. You simply write your post in an email and send it to your own personal Posterous email address. You can add images and links, too. For advanced users, you can edit your blog post from the Posterous site as well. I think this really opens the doors to all those educators and students who would like to dip in their toes but may be intimidated by blogging technologies.I'm curious if you think an application like this might actually prove useful in a classroom.

Would more teachers blog if it were this much easier? or is the problem much bigger?

Thanks To My PLN, There Will ALWAYS Be a Plan "B"

So, what do you do when the "Dog and Pony Show" lesson you have planned just doesn't work? You have a back up plan. All good teachers know you should always have a good "Plan B." Well, it happened to me recently as we were about to shoot a segment of PalmBreezeCAFE. A few days prior, in preparation for the segment, I was checking out Vocaroo (an online, one-push audio publishing app) and I even had lots of great educators checking it out with me. I posted about it on this blog and my PLN, as awesome as they are, even added their "Vocaroos" in the comments explaining how they thought Vocaroo could be used in a classroom situation. It was the perfect storm.

Enter that morning, and boot up the computers and wouldn't you know it? The Vocaroos just wouldn't load. The site wasn't blocked but something with a port being not opened or something and well, it just wasn't going to work for us. This is not that uncommon at our studio, being within the school district firewall (even with expanded firewall access) we still run into issues.

So, now we are scheduled to start taping in about 45 minutes and I've got nothing else prepared. (So much for the "good teachers" mention above.) I quickly thumbed through my Del.icio.us bookmarks hoping to find something I'd tossed in there for a future segment, but that wouldn't require much preparation and I found something that had been gathering dust for quite some time. Found it; www.stixy.com An online, free, white-board (sorta) collaborative environment.

I took a quick look at Stixy and liked how it you can easily create a collaborative workspace with sticky notes, pictures, calendar items and documents and no login required! I quickly threw out a tweet asking my PLN to please rescue me and come join me in my Stixy room and add some content. Well, I was not disappointed! Thank you to all who took the time to help me learn about Stixy "on the spot" and helped make my "Plan B" a terrific spot!

Watch, learn and you won't be disappointed either!