Web 2.0 at school....Can we? Please?

As we go through this class, and the safety discussion from this week, it really does make me want to revisit some of these topics, and what we have accessible and available for use at my school. So often, the response we get when we want to use something that is blocked is that "we can't monitor that, they might abuse it." Well....shouldn't we show them the good ways in which they can use it, and supervise them? I know this has been brought up many times, by many of us, during this class.

I feel that we are starting to make some progress at my school. Some things that didn't use to be allowed are now unblocked. Wikipedia has been unblocked for teachers, and Blogger has been unblocked for teachers, and YouTube is starting to be accepted....for teachers. I think that if we give a reason why WE want to use it, we are being listened to. Now, we need to look at supporting an argument for why the students can use it as well.

Blogs and Wikis seem really useful to me, as they can be used in so very many ways, and in any content area. They can be used to address pretty much all of the 21st century skills, and students can create, respond, discuss, collaborate, and share. At school, we now have access to Moodle, and Moodle has its own Wikis and Blogs built in. I think over the summer I want to explore these tools, and see how they compare to sites such as PBWorks and Blogger. Perhaps we can start in the structured, tightly-modereated areas that the school currently has access to, and use products and successes there to expand outwards.

In addition, I think that Twitter would be a great tool for communication with students, parents, and community. It could be used for prompts, assignments, reminders, announcements, and links. There are schools that already have school accounts, such as the one I mentioned a few posts ago in my Twitter blog. I am part of a communication committee at school, and we are trying to come up with new ways to make communication effective and successful. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if a Twitter account might be one small way to do that. Putting it on the internet would be an easy way to reach a lot of people, and for those that already have Twitter, they could just add it in to the accounts that they follow. I'm sure kids would love to get up early on a snowy day and log in to Twitter to see if school was canceled!

I know full well that the best solution is not to unlock everything at once and just go crazy. So, maybe we need to pick a few tools here and there, or more moderated/educational versions of things, to see how they go. Here's hoping!