Classroom 2.0: The Book - A Collaborative Project
So I've been mulling this over for a couple of months, and I think we should do it.
I'd like to propose that as a community we work together to create a book on the uses and impact of Web 2.0 in education. This could be in the form of a wiki or a downloadable PDF file, or both, and would involve the outlining of the the book's contents, then working together to write it. We would want chapters introducing Web 2.0 principles and pedagogies, specific technologies by category (blogs, wikis, social networks, etc.), and give lots of practical examples of their actual use both for classroom application and professional development.
Of course, the content will need to be updated and/or changed with some regularity, but if this idea is a good one, we could schedule to do minor changes every 6 months and major changes every year.
If we were to have a print version (Lulu?), or if a publisher (dreaming?) wanted to pick it up, we could use any revenues to help sponsor the free workshop series.
There are a number of questions we'd have to answer if we decided to do this: how do we delegate and oversee contributions, who would do final edits, what platform would we use to write it (wiki, Google docs, other?), what license to release it under, and many more I'm sure you will think of that I haven't. I'm going to propose that we hold an Elluminate session to talk these through and do the initial organizing, but before we do so I thought it might be good to get some feedback from you first.
Do you like the idea? Do you have any initial thoughts?
I'd like to propose that as a community we work together to create a book on the uses and impact of Web 2.0 in education. This could be in the form of a wiki or a downloadable PDF file, or both, and would involve the outlining of the the book's contents, then working together to write it. We would want chapters introducing Web 2.0 principles and pedagogies, specific technologies by category (blogs, wikis, social networks, etc.), and give lots of practical examples of their actual use both for classroom application and professional development.
Of course, the content will need to be updated and/or changed with some regularity, but if this idea is a good one, we could schedule to do minor changes every 6 months and major changes every year.
If we were to have a print version (Lulu?), or if a publisher (dreaming?) wanted to pick it up, we could use any revenues to help sponsor the free workshop series.
There are a number of questions we'd have to answer if we decided to do this: how do we delegate and oversee contributions, who would do final edits, what platform would we use to write it (wiki, Google docs, other?), what license to release it under, and many more I'm sure you will think of that I haven't. I'm going to propose that we hold an Elluminate session to talk these through and do the initial organizing, but before we do so I thought it might be good to get some feedback from you first.
Do you like the idea? Do you have any initial thoughts?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Lynne H on -
I love the idea. So many teachers I know have little or no experience in web 2.0 technologies. An even bigger void is school administrators. (could there be tie in? - that's another discussion entirely) Anyway, I'd be glad to help out. holding an Eluminate session sounds like a good start - get people together and thinking out loud. Many times some of the best ideas are launched during brainstorming sessions.
It would be nice to have some type of published version. The teachersadmin we most need to reach are the ones who will not read on the web but need something in their hands.
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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on -
Lynne: Great points. And I've been thinking a lot about administrators recently, and it makes a ton of sense to even see if someone might consider writing a chapter or entry directly to them. I've also had on the back burner an "administrator 2.0" network idea that came up in one of our Elluminate sessions. Do they need somewhere where they can talk with other administrators about Web 2.0 which also gives them a sense of the potential?
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Permalink Reply by samccoy on -
Wow! This is a great conversation.
Using WORDLE, I made an analysis of the top 200 words from our current discussion, ending with LynneH. For me, it's a valuable tool that I use to analyze and evaluate what topics are most important in my thought process while writing, so I hoped it might help others as well.
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Permalink Reply by Annette Holder on -
I would love to help as much as I am able. I am somewhat new to the whole Web 2.0 idea but am quickly becoming a digital native.
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Ludmila Smirnova on -
What a brilliant idea, Steve! I am totally for it!
This book will help us spread the word about the Web 2.0 environment, tools and services available for teachers and students nowadays. I think wiki would be good to start with for discussing the structure of the book, its chapters, etc. I think there should be a chapter on the theoretical foundations of the Web 2.0 platform, its constructivist, participatory nature; a glossary, etc.
By the way, I have written an application for a sabbatical and the topic of my leave is exploring the nature of Web 2.0, its role in the social and educational change, etc. I am very excited! Elluminate or WiZiQ would be good for the live discussions and brainstorming.
Ludmilla
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Permalink Reply by samccoy on
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Ludmila, I forgot about "...theoretical foundations of the Web 2.0 platform, its constructivist, participatory nature; a glossary, etc...." Very important to have a good foundation, especially for the audience we would want to reach with this book.
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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on
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Oh, great point about the theoretical / pedagogical connections. Let's do this for sure!
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Permalink Reply by Robin Martin on -
Steve, Here you are riding the HEAD of the wave! Excellent collaborative idea. Will web2.0 be 3.0 by the time we are finished? What an awesome idea using web2.0 tools to produce a document about web2.0. I hesitate to use book, because it could actually include video, audio and some web2.0 tools in action of course!!
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Permalink Reply by John Faig on -
You hit the nail on the proverbial head. To make this project successful, we will need multimedia content and hands-on activities.
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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on
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This, I think, is the value of having a resource that is both web-based and gets printed. The print version serves as a bridge to the audience that's not web-savvy, but the web version can have so much more.
However, that also introduces a complication, since then the content is different and we have to have some easy system for creating the print version from the web version. I wonder if we couldn't have a template for the web contributions which had specific sections for the video/audio/other and that in the printed version we would point to those sections letting folks know what is available online.
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Permalink Reply by John Faig on
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I have a few thoughts on the online versus print topic.
1. Should be wait to see how difficult a print version would be after we create some content
2. Should we have a subgroup to convert the online version to a print version. For example, I am excited about content development, whereas some people may be better at graphic arts and desktop pub
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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on
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Good ideas. On the other hand, if we can find a tool that helps to automate that conversion, I'd prefer it because then it means that we have less complication to getting to the finished product each time we come out with a revision.
Wikispaces is working on some features to make publishing easier. Don't know about PBWiki or WetPaint or any of the others.
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