Thing #5

I just finished reading three articles from my 23 things list. The first article or website was Web  2.0: A Guide for Educators. This website is sponsored by Dell and includes various resources for how educators can implement technology inside the classroom. The article explains what exactly Web 2.0 is and it's implications for classroom use. Many students are extremely tech savvy and schools must catch up in technological standards or risk loosing our students. The article also recommends many useful tools for teachers to use such as: blogs, social bookmarking sites, podcasts and the personal learning space (PLE). I found it extremely informative and I, also, feel that schools must do a great deal of catch up when it comes to technology inside the classrooms. The second website I viewed was the Horizons Report.This report goes in depth about new and emerging technologies (as of 2008). I believed they were on track with their predictions of future (2012) technologies such as mobile broadband. Where would we be without our smart phones and wifi hot spots? The paper listed several challenges that needed to be met such as the need for more experimentation with newer technologies within the academic community, higher education's expectations for content delivery, and the push for more collaborative learning assessments and interaction within the educational community. I felt this article was very wordy but informative. I was amazing to see how much technology has changed since this article was written. I feel most, if not all, of the challenges are being met at Austin Peay. The third website I visited is called Teachers 2.0. It is essentially a blog for anyone within the educational community that would like to discuss technology as it relates to the classroom. One downside is that it is not currently letting members upload pictures or video because of a hacking incidentI think this is an awesome idea and I will keep this in mind for future use.
In my terms, School 2.0 means an educational system wired and up to date technologically. Teachers and students are communicating via blog and web posts daily and computers and technology are integrated throughout each classroom of the school. This means alot for the schools of the future. I think of the word fluid when I think of a seamless flow of information from technology into the classroom. Students and teachers are plugged in together and communication is seamless.