The Web Reimagined: Tools of Web 2.0

We are now (nearly) halfway through the spring semester and what an interesting week it has been! Between the Olympics, classes being moved to Zoom, and both my husband's and daughter's birthdays, things have been all over the map. For the technology in education course, we covered web 2.0, and some of the tools associated with this growing industry, including Diigo 

At first, I was not excited about using Diigo. I was easily overwhelmed by how it worked and what the purpose of it was. The program works similar to that of Google Docs, or PBWorks, which are great tools to use for teachers to encourage their students to use. However, after several Youtube videos and interactions with the site, I did find it more simple to use than I originally thought, but I'm still not set on using it in the future.

Pros:

• Great place to store resources, especially for group projects.
• Works as an extension program for Google Chrome.
• This allows the user to annotate and highlight their resources along with adding features such as a sticky note with personal comments.
• Free source to use. 
• Has an upgrade option, but is not required.

Cons:

• If you do not use the extension, you won't be able to use the above features, which can make it difficult to utilize Diigo's service
• The interface is not as user-friendly as it is advertised.
• With the free program, there are limits to how many words you can highlight, how many PDFs you can make, etc. which, can be frustrating for students.

Overall, I think Diigo would be good for individual students to use to collect their resources in one location with some annotations attached for their own use, and they can share sources with their classmates. I think there are other sources out there (such as PBWorks) that are simpler to use and have just as many features as Diigo.

On the other side of Web 2.0, there are more individual tools like blogs. I have been using blogs on and off since the early 2000s (y'all remember Xanga and old-school blogger?). What I enjoy about blogs is how a user can express themselves in a multitude of ways. Whether it is through a journal-like blog, a lifestyle blog, or even a classroom blog there are countless ways to add content. The features of a blog are also fairly simple, especially when it comes to design and layout. And I love that I no longer need to use HTML coding to make the blog look a certain way! The struggle with blogs is that, like with Spider-man, with great power comes great responsibility. Blog posts should be proofread, respectable, and have an overall appeal to them, which sometimes people can struggle with online. Especially students. However, with practice, these struggles can be improved.

As for an additional tool on web 2.0 I will likely use in my classroom, Quizlet has the top spot. This website is free program students and teachers can use to create study quizzes. This could be for vocabulary words, plots, and even mathematical equations. The purpose of this site is to help the user study and the quizzes made can also be shared with classmates or classrooms. It also allows users to see their recently viewed quizzes and get personal recommended studies based on their current use. The creation of quizzes do take some time, but overall the interface is easy to use for most technology levels.

What is your favorite web 2.0 tool? Please comment and give your reasoning behind the choice, I'd love to find more resources.

Until next time!

À bientôt!

-Renee Brady