Amy's Notes

Web 2.0 Applications

Wow! I certainly had no idea of the many Web 2.0 applications that are available for use on the Internet. I began by reading Ben Hunt’s article, The future web2.0 social experience. (http://www.webdesignfrom scratch.com/future-social-web-experience.cfm) Instead of giving me answers, I think it actually made me more confused. I read the article, Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications and then skipped down to Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog. (http://web2.wsj2.com/the_best_web_20_software_of_2005.htm ) This article was very easy to read and offered many applications to try.
I began with Writely.com and soon discovered that it has been obtained by Google and is now called Google: Docs & Spreadsheets (http://docs.google.com ) It also doesn’t work yet with Safari, but I switched to FireFox and it worked fine. I am interested in this application because any person with access to the Internet could use this program and have a common word processor. It would make editing and collaboration easier, especially when the document is also stored on the Internet. I learned that documents that I create can be sent directly to my blog which could be handy. I don’t plan to use this particular application with my second graders, but I do see great uses for it with the teachers in my building. It would make sharing documents and spreadsheets much easier. If I had older students and several computers with access to the Internet, I could teach one word processor instead of several versions used by different computers in my room. I like the options that this program offers.
I also experimented with Doodle, an online polling application. (http://www.doodle.ch ) This program allows the user to create polls with a title, description, date and times. It could be really useful for scheduling meetings. The following is a screenshot of the example poll.

Each participant can log in and mark times that they are available to meet. I thought that this would be great for voting in the classroom and set up a poll for voting for the Illinois Governor on election day. The only drawback is that every participant can see the other results. This is great if you are setting up a meeting, but not so good if you want an anonymous poll. If they would add the option to see results or hide results, I could easily set up one computer station and rotate students through to collect data.
Hipcal (http://www.hipcal.com ) was my next adventure. This application allows the user to create an online calendar that can be shared with others. It also uses the calendar events to create a to - do list and can send alerts so you will not forget anything. It seemed very similar to iCal, a calendar program on my iBook. It allows you to view the calendar by day, week or month. Settings will allow you to add categories and subcategories and to color code each. All categories can be viewed or hidden as desired. For example, I listed school, church and work activities but could easily hide any of the three. There is a memo option for notes and an alert option for reminders. This calendar might be good for posting a school calendar or creating a printable calendar with due dates for a project.
Finally, I examined a movie site and a restaurant site. The movie site (http://www.criteo.com) allows the user to critique movies and find other users that enjoy the same movies thus creating suggestions for new movies. The restaurant guide (http://www.toeat.com ) is in the process of being created. Like Ben Hunt’s vision for Web 2.0, it requires users to participate by adding favorite restaurants and offering reviews of the food. Many people need to become involved in adding restaurants and reviewing them and then soon the site will include a plethora of restaurant information.
Although, I have not found many applications to use directly with my second graders. I have learned about some applications that could be useful to the organization of my classroom and the collaboration and sharing of information with peers which will affect the way I teach and how my students learn. Gaining this knowledge also made me more aware of using the Internet in new ways.