5 Weeks later

It has been 5 weeks since I completed the Web 2.0 course and thought it would be a good idea to reflect upon what has changed for me since learning more about Web 2.0. My strategy has been to allow some of this knowledge to leak into my teaching rather than make wholesale changes, which I don't think any experienced teacher should feel pressured to do. I focused on Year 10 because they have the laptops and I felt the need to create opportunities for the students to use them constructively.

I teach the year 10's Geography and History. For Geography, I have asked the students to use a blog to write a reflection on some new learning or to answer a higher order question based on a lesson. Students have enjoyed the opportunity to develop their writing skills and to also constructively critique each other's blog entries by leaving comments on each other's blog. You can keep track of each student's work by being a follower, or you can use the RSS feed into Google Reader. It's a quick way of ensuring that students are doing their homework and make reference to individual student's work in class discussion.

Initially, it was tedious to get all students to the same point as believe it or not, many students had no idea how to set up a blog. This immediately made me feel better because we tend to assume that all kids know more about technology than us - not true.

The fun part has been preparing the Wiki for the same group of students but this time for History. I have been able to have students post their group work findings on this wiki for the study of different Australian governments. I have also posted a lot of my own resources, Youtube clips, Scootle learning pathways and other website links. The students also record their opinions and questions which guides our discussion in class. It is amazingly easy to do with only a limited knowledge of Wikis. So far, I haven't come across any student who knows more than me which makes me think that they don't know as much as I thought they did about technology.

The benefits: Students are now working, communicating outside of class hours and apparently....dare I say...enjoying it!! This has made it less of a rush to get through content, and I still make time for traditional lessons where we construct a class notes to document the learning as I would normally do.