DD Shift

I am hearing the song “Hear Comes Your Man” by the Pixies.

This is my last official entry (although not my last blog entry by far).

I have enjoyed the class. I have learned alot. I wish that there were a second part of the class where I am forced to explore even more 2.0 tools. But, sadly it must come to an end.

I have made many exciting discoveries during the course. Diigo, blogging, wikis, the Academy of Discovery, articles about the advantages and disadvantages of integrating the use of Facebook into the curriculum…

My biggest suggestions (and, maybe this is the next generation of 2.0 development) is developing a sane way of managing all of these different tools in such a way that they are easily accessible, locatable and safe for our students. There are too many tools to keep track of, and I don’t have a virtual tool belt to help me organize them.

How can we make use of OpenId? If we join as educators, will that create the critical mass needed to make it a viable way of having a single sign-on for all of these tools?

Web 2.0 is fast, easy– it could be misconstrued as reflection-less. How can we build in a step of reflection before our students push that publish button? How do we promote the review of sources? How do we encourage well developed paragraphs and grammatically-sound sentences? What is the appropriate means of citing articles in a web forum? Is a link enough? Or, do we go with a standard MLA or APA way of citing works? What makes sense in this environment?

As always, I’m interested in looking at “real” studies that examine the effectiveness of using these technologies in this classroom. I have no interest in jumping on the Prensky bandwagon (nor are my administrators) without more concrete evidence first.