In a previous post I embedded a Youtube video called Did You Know. It broke the page. The border surrounding the post stopped and words bled all over the rest of page. I kept fiddling with the embed code and discovered that there was extra parameter code at the beginning of the script that must have confused Wordpress. It took a lot of trial and error debugging, but voile! No extra code. No more broken boxes. Yea, it works, now! 
School 2.0, which comes from th term-Web 2.0, are new buzzwords in tech ed. First, Let’s understand what web 1.0 before we talk about web 2.0. Web 1.0 is most of the web pages on the internet that you visit. It is read-only. You read it, look at the pictures, passively absorb the information, and gradually let it evaporate out of your memory. Most of the information is lost in the 7 +-2 seconds it is retained in short term memory.
School is often much this way. I have been guilty of this too, I would pour out my knowledge for my students to soak in. I would then question them, or even give them a test. Then we would move on to the next Grade Level Expectation. Unfortunately, the knowledge they soaked up evaporated after it was not longer needed (and sometimes before).
Web 2.0 is much different. It is also called the Read/Write Web. You can read it. You can WRITE it! It is a conversation between the student and his or her audience. Kind of like the conversation we’re having right now. What conversation you ask? How do you write the Web? We’ll get to that in a moment. Through blogs(like this one), through wikis, through social networking, through social bookmarking, through photo sharing sites like Flikr, we communicate with each other. We talk. We share stories. We make connections. We know the brain works by making connections between neurons. Our brains connect ideas to our current thoughts and connect to previous ideas in new ways. By communicating about our ideas with others we all connect new ideas and perspectives to previous ideas. We learn to talking to others and with others. The wonder of Read/Write web tools is that people we talk to don’t have to be in the same room or even in the same hemisphere. That could be anywhere on our flat earth.
Learning in school 2.0 should be 2-way also. The students shouldn’t just be consumers of knowledge. They need to create knowledge. When students actively engage the knowledge on their level, wrestle with it until it comes out in the shape they want it in, then it will stick with them for life. What do you remember from your school career? Is it all the textbooks you read and information you consumed, or is it the things you made with your own hands or with others? Students need to talk about what , write about, and make things about they’re learning. They need to connect with the knowledge, connect with others, and connect with themselves in order to make the information theirs.
You’ve read all this about communicating and connecting, but I still haven’t answered your question have I? How do we have a conversation if I’m doing all the talking? You haven’t had your turn to talk yet have you? Here’s how you do it: at the end of this post is the word “comments” in orange. Click the comment link to leave your comments. It doesn’t have to be on this post, it can be on any post. Tell me your thoughts about my thoughts and we’ll continue our conversation.
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