Introduction
Web 2.0 is a fairly new term that
describes some of the recent changes to the World Wide Web. Traditionally the
web was a place where people could get information it was ‘read only’. However
in the last 5 years the web has developed. Now as well as being able to read
information it is also possible to write to the web. Its two way, read and
write. Wikipedia has a good article on web 2.0 and you can find that here. I would also
recommend the ‘Coming of Age’
a free on-line book which talks about the new World Wide Web. Some people
including Will Richardson prefer the
name the read / write web.
Some of the Web 2.0 tools that we
have available to us as teachers are Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts.
1) A blog is an on-line journal at can allow
people to comment. They can be personal or public.
2) A podcast is an on-line
radio programme that anyone can download. You can subscribe to podcasts through
sites like itunes, which mean that new episodes instantly get delivered to you
when they are produced. Ewan Macintosh
once described this to me as the difference between going to collect your paper
and having it delivered to your house.
3) A wiki is a web page that anyone can edit
and up-date. Wikipedia
is the classic example of this.
Here's a nice little video to introduce web 2.0
Use Wiki’s for collaborative work.
Wikis are great for getting students to publish quickly to the web. I use wikispaces but there are other
alternatives. The good thing about wikispaces is that it is that the free
service is advert free for education. You also get a free wikispace if you
create an edublog.
I have used wikis as an
alternative for students submitting a written weather diary. They could also be
used for collaborative group work. The Dunbar Geography
Wiki Space is a good example of when I have posted some instructions
for students on a weather project. Wiki’s can also be used for collaborative
projects for pupils and teachers. Have a look at our Extreme Learning Wiki and
please feel free to contribute to the discussion.
The important thing to remember
about Wiki’s is that you can always go pack to a previous version of a page.
This means that you can’t actually delete anything and if you do delete
something by accident it’s easy to go back to it.
Don’t forget that you can get your
students to write Wikipedia
articles. I have a number of former pupils that have contributed to
the largest encyclopedia in the world.
Use a blog to set up your own departmental web site. If you want to set up a quick web site I would recommend using edublogs. It’s important to remember that
a blog which doesn’t allow comment is just a web site. With edublogs which is
based on wordpress you can decide
if you want people to be able to leave comment or not for everything you post.
It’s a really powerful free tool which is available to educators thanks to the
work of James Farmer.
On the edublogs site there are a number of good
on-line tutorials including:
David Warlick also provides a great handout on how
to set up an edublog site.
Get students to set up their own learning logs (blogs). Students can also set up their own learning logs. You can use Learnerblogs for this which is the sister
site of edublogs. Again I have
used blogs to get students to record weather reports. Currently I am working on
learning blogs with my S1 social education class. In these blogs they reflect
on three questions:
- What they did at school this week?
- What they have learnt
at school this week? and
- What they will do now?
I think this sort of experience
would also be useful in Geography and perhaps a lot better homework experience
than some of the exercises that we currently set in S1 and S2. I don’t agree
with setting homework for homework’s sake.
Have a look at some good learning
logs from Colin, Craig and Catriona.
Keep your own blog. The process of
keeping a blog is incredibly reflective. I have learnt more about Geography and
education in the last 18 months of blogging and reading blogs than I did in the
previous four years. It becomes an incredible learning journey and allows
you to collaborate with educators from around the world.
My previous blog
about my role as head of Geography at Dunbar Grammar School can be
found here.
Other geography teacher blogs include:
- Digital Geography – Noel
Jenkins
- Geography and all that jazz
– Alan Parkinson
- Geography: my place and yours–
Val Vannett
- Radical Geography Blog –
Tony Cassidy
If you’re a geography teacher and
you keep your own blog or you decide to start one – why not leave a comment
below!
Create your own on-line radio station.
Experiment with making podcasts. If you use a Mac you can use garageband which is part
of ILife. It has a built in podcast function. Alternatively audacity is a great free alternative and
is available for the Mac and PC as a free down load from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ There is
also now a portable
version of Audacity available, which means you can run it staright off a
pen drive and you don’t have to get it installed on your computer by the
Council.
I have used podcasts before to
make weather forecasts. Students used to come to my room at break time and
produce programmes like
this in the 20 minutes. They collected the data from the schools
automated weather station.
You can find out how to make
podcasts by looking a PC Pod
a blog that was set up as part of a new technologies course that I helped facilitate
for Learning and Teaching Scotland. Also check out this video which was also
made on the course it shows how to make podcast with garageband.
One Geography specific podcast project is called GEOCASTS. The GEOCAST project was funded by Microsoft Partners in Learning and is an on-going project to create revision material for Geography. There are a number of current episodes that can be downloaded from the web site www.exc-el.org.uk/geocasts. Over the next six months more episodes will become available. You can also subscribe to GEOCASTS through itunes. Just type in ‘Geocasts’ to the itune search facility. (New Geocast site on the way soon).
Students can download these
revision episodes to their computers, ipods, Mp3 players and mobile phones. If
they have a video ipod or choose to watch the episodes on their computer there
is also to visual content.
An example of a GEOCAST on the
formation of Corries, Arêtes
and Pyramidal Peaks is here. You can listen to the mp3 audio only here.
You will need to have the latest version
QuickTime
or itunes
installed in order to view it. These are both free downloads.
Mobile Phones. Most student shave mobile phones these days. To find out different uses for mobile phones in the classroom have a look at this article that I wrote as part of the 50 ideas presentation.
Computer Games. Consider
using games like Sim City during the
settlement unit. You can download the original version for free from http://simcit.ea.com. I have set this in the
past as optional settlement homework. I start to build a new city at the same time as the rest of the
class and we have a competition over 3 or four weeks to see who can build the
best city. I believe that students will learn more about city planning,
logistics and infrastructure by playing this than they ever will about me
rambling on about Burgess’s Concentric Ring Model! The good news is the Sim City is just about
to come out for the DS!
The other games that I sometimes
ask students to play for homework are on the OS Map Zone web site. I
know that they have played them because I ask them to take a screen shot of
their best score and to email it to me or to print it out. This way I can set
up a leader board in my classroom.
There are also a number of other
good geography games that can be played in class or for a homework exercise.
These include:
If you want to find out more about games
in education have a look at Derek Robertson’s Hot Milky Drink
blog on Games in Education. Don’t forget to try teaching about
Cities by swinging Spiderman around New York on the Nintendo Wii!
Wow! That's a great post! Thanks for the Edublogs link and recommendation :)
You might want to link me to http://incsub.org though (more my personal space).
Cheers, James
Posted by: James Farmer | June 15, 2007 at 01:03 AM
Have you tried
http://www.electrocity.co.nz/
This is quite a fun city building game.
Posted by: Paul Wilkinson | June 15, 2007 at 06:09 AM
A very helpful summary! One of the things I want to do is think about how we can use wikis, blogs and shared photo sites like Flickr to enhance/develop links between our School and Former Pupils
Posted by: Jim Mcdougall | June 16, 2007 at 06:01 PM
Great Post! I agree with you 100%. Web 2.0 is very exciting for geography teachers. I recently created a blog called "Our World." The purpose of the blog is to connect my students with people all over the world and discuss aspects of geography. The students live in a rural community in Wisconsin, U.S.A. If anyone is interested in participating, contact me at mr.kamrowski@gmail.com and visit the site:
http://geographyoftheworld.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Mr. Kamrowski | June 19, 2007 at 03:38 PM