Thing 5

I think the power of web 2.0 is pretty obvious, the Gen Y Guide-Web 2.0 @ Work, this person actually got a job at IBM as a result of Web 2.0.

One personal experience I had with web 2.o was last summer. Three of us were planning a week long backpacking trip to Isle Royale National Park. One was/is a full time student and works full time, another lives is Baltimore, the other was me. We used Google Docs to create a spreadsheet that we could all view and edit. We planned what each other was bringing, paying for, packing, responsibilities, etc. It made planning for the trip a snap.

Professionally I feel that I can use web 2.0 to maintain professional conversations, networks, collaborations, with others who are educational professionals.

Ultimately, for the students it provides yet another learning modality. How great of an experience is it for a student to be in a world cultures class and be having an essentially real time conversation with someone from an area being studied-South America for example?! It provides another layer of learning and provides some authenticity. We know from our own lives that we learn best from doing, we can't take trips around the world when studying various cultures but web 2.0 provides an opportunity for some authentic learning related to the subject.

My wife has a friend in Argentina. They began writing actual letters-on paper-about 13 years ago, about as long as my wife and I have known each other. They have had the opportunity to watch instant communication evolve. It's been really exciting to see how their communication has evolved as well...we had the chance to visit Buenos Aires in 2006 for a couple of weeks. It provided us with a great learning experience, a lot of that experience could have been documented and shared with a class through web 2.0 applications.