Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms Summary

Richardson, W. (2008). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

This book is a great tool for those wanting to learn more about Web 2.0 tools. While it is geared with a teacher in mind, it provides enough information to help you get your own blog, wiki, flickr and podcast accounts up and running. This is a summary of the 2008 edition. A 2010 has also been published.

Technology has changed the way students receive information, interact with others and ultimately the way they learn, making a traditional classroom without integrated technology ineffective.

Weblogs have made writing to the web easy and accessible to everyone, providing all users with a voice on the Internet.

To utilize blogs in the classroom effectively, teachers must first experiment with their own blog, determine the format they prefer and discover the blogger within!

Wikis are collaborative, interactive websites, that allow the current user to create new content or “click” edit and assume editorial control of the established topic.

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) allows users to track streams of information as a news feed. It’s a web version of the Times Square news ticket.

Sharing on the web allows us to step out of our classrooms, states and countries and join in conversations without boundaries becoming a world community.

Flickr allows users to communicate with images, rather than words, to tell a story, one picture or a collection (set of images) at a time.

Podcasts allow for the creations of “radio shows” that can be heard on any media device. Screencasts take that to the next level with video!

Classrooms we were used to are no longer relevant. The way we interact, exchange idea and communicate have forever been changed by Web 2.0 tools