Wikis, Blogs & More, Oh My!

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Web 2.0 Tools

Wikis, Blogs & More, Oh My!

4/1/2008

By Matt Villano

Join Us For Next-Gen.Edu!

DON'T MISS CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY 2008, our 15th annual summer conference, July 28-31 in Boston, MA. This year's event offers a blueprint for adapting to the new demands of Web 2.0 teaching and learning, both in and out of the classroom. You'll come away armed with tricks, tips, and techniques to survive and thrive in the "Next-Gen" educational environment, thanks to sessions like:

Riding Web 2.0 Toward Service Beyond the Classroom
The Next-Generation ePortfolio
10 Web 2.0 Tech-Enhanced Strategies to Engage Your Learners
Supporting Next-Gen Academic Development in a Web 2.0 World
Worldware and the New Personal Learning Environments
Next-Gen Asynchronous AV Interactions That Boost Student Feedback and Lighten Faculty Workload
The Digital Commons: Blogs,Wikis, and More for the Next-Gen Campus
Using Second Life to "Road Test" Tech Space Planning

Challenges for Collaboration

With technologies such as these, it's hard to understand why more college and university educators haven't asked themselves how to get the most from Web 2.0. Still, not everyone is entirely sold on the wonder of this next generation of internet tools.

Dahl at Lake Superior raises concerns about resource management. After praising the value of some of the Web 2.0 tools he uses at his school, he concedes that-particularly in the area of online learning-many Web 2.0 tools can create real problems for the Technical Support department, since a good number of students might need help figuring out how to scale the learning curve of a certain product.

"If you have 30 students and 25 of them have never used a particular kind of blogging software, but all of a sudden it's a requirement of the course, those students are going to bombard the help desk with support calls as soon as they see the syllabus," he maintains. "Adding another layer of technology requires more attention on our part, and that's something we have to prepare for."

Ron Danielson, vice provost for information services and CIO at Santa Clara University (CA), agrees, adding that many Web 2.0 tools are worthwhile, but not intuitive to use. Danielson recounts his experience chairing a search committee for a new dean at his school: He recalls that many of the other faculty members on the committee hadn't the foggiest notion about how to use a wiki he developed. He says this kind of adoption lag presents a huge obstacle for Web 2.0 tools because the technologies will never become more than novelties unless a critical mass of users feels comfortable relying on them to collaborate.