Keeping up with Technology
A Guide to Web 2.0 Guides
Craig Roland
The past several years have
witnessed the emergence
of new ways to experience
the World Wide Web. The
term “Web 2.0” has been coined to
describe the Web’s transition from a
collection of static websites containing information to a more dynamic,
interactive, social, and content-sharing environment. Web 2.0 tools
and services like blogs, wikis, pod-casts, photo- and video-sharing sites,
social networks, and virtual worlds
are now being used daily by millions
of people around the globe to connect, communicate, collaborate,
create, and share with others.
One of the many challenges art
teachers face is keeping abreast of
emerging technologies and assessing their potential applicability in
their classrooms. Fortunately, there
are a number of online guides and
websites intended to help teachers
and others learn about Web 2.0 technologies and how to use them.
One-Page Guides
Tim Davies has produced an excellent series of one-page guides on
various Web 2.0 applications and
websites including photo-sharing
with Flickr, social bookmarking
with Del.icio.us, online video editing with MotionBox, reading RSS
feeds with NetVibes, and collaborative writing with wikis (
www.tim-davies.org.uk/tags/onepage). The
guides are available as either PDF
files for direct printing or as Word
documents that you can edit and
adapt for your own purposes.
7 Things You Should
Know About…
Another great source for information on emerging technologies is
the “ 7 Things You Should Know
About...” series of briefs produced by
EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher
education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.
Each brief focuses on a single technology or practice—such as Creative
Commons, Digital Storytelling,
Skype, Virtual Worlds, Wikipedia,
and You Tube—and describes what
it is, how it works, where it is going,
and why it matters in education
( www.educause.edu/Things YouSh-
ouldKnowAboutSeries/7495).
including RSS Feeds, social bookmarks, blogs, and wikis. Robitaille
also discusses the educational benefits of each tool and provides links
to numerous educational examples
and additional resources where you
can go for more information.
Common Craft Videos
For visual learners, Common Craft
( www.commoncraft.com) creates
short explanatory videos using
simple diagrams and drawn figures
to make complex ideas easier to
understand. They have produced a
very popular series of videos on various Web 2.0 tools and practices with
such titles as “Wikis in Plain English,” Blogs in Plain English,” and
“Social Bookmarking in Plain English.” If you’re at all intimidated by
talk of “Web 2.0,” these videos are
a great place to start learning about
the new technologies that are now
an integral part of the online experience of millions of people.
Web 2.0 Tutorial
Andrew Robitaille created the Web
2.0 Tutorial (web2tutorial.wiki-
spaces.com) for educators. In it, he
explains what the Web 2.0 is and
focuses on various Web 2.0 tools
Craig Roland is an associate professor of
art education in the School of Art and Art
History at the University of Florida in
Gainesville, Florida. He is the author of
The Art Teacher’s Guide to the Internet
(Davis Publications, 2005). rolandc@ufl.
edu
