Journal #5: "Collaboration in a Web 2.0 Environment"

By: Glen Bull

“Collaboration…” is an article about all the different ways that people – students and teachers – can work together, on one project, from more than one location. This article not only gives written examples and explanations of syndication on the web, but it also shows visual examples of the links you may see on a webpage. Some of the possibilities for use of a Web 2.0 environment in the classroom are: following multiple student postings, such as individuals bogs; collaboration and syndication, where students can work on one document through the web and keep it all together, even if they are not; a web 2.0 desktop which updates itself with no direction from the user; and following a topic of interest where it mentions social bookmarking and the providing of links to related information. The author provides some good insights that would definitely help a teacher use technology in their classroom if they wanted to.

Q1: Which of the author’s suggestions would be most helpful in a classroom?
A1: I believe that the first suggestion – following multiple student postings, would provide the most assistance to the teacher at least. If each student is creating and posting to their own individual blog, it would be incredibly useful to have one place to tell you all the updates from each blog, as opposed to searching each one separately for any changes.

Q2: Which of the author’s suggestions would be least helpful in a classroom?
A2: I believe that the least helpful, at least in an elementary setting where I want to be, would be the Web 2.0 desktop. I don’t think that being updated on everything each student does would be something useful when the students are in 3rd grade. I think I would rather concentrate on showing them how to use the other tools before I was checking up on everything they did.

Bull, G (2006 April). “Collaboration in a Web 2.0 Environment”. Learning and Leading in Technology, Vol 33, Issue 7, Retrieved February 27, 2009, from http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=April_No_7_&Template=/MembersOnly.cfm&ContentFileID=2642