23 Ideas for Web 2.0

25 Days to Make a Difference: (Laura Stockman) http://twentyfivedays.wordpress.com/about/ is the first blog I visited today. This is amazing and it is what we should be encouraging our children to do – writing a blog about their passion and motivating others to do the same. This is how young people can connect. Having tried a similar experiment in my class this fall, (http://blogs.mywayland.org/multimedia/) I see that one of the most important aspects about blogging is passion. I am excited to work on my skills so I can pass on the passion.

The Upside-down pop quiz motivated me to engage teachers in our language, English, science and social studies/business departments. I sent them the link and offered to help them put such a process together through Moodle (which many of them use) or any other sort of blog.

Other blogs that I visited include Teaching Brevity to Students, The Myth of the digital Native, and Learning is Change, The Ripe Environment

My favorite part of the Ripe Environment was the advice on content. I put it here so that I can easily look back at this to remember when I blog or ask my students to:

“That is why we use blogs to communicate, not because they are easy, not because they are more collaborative, it is simply because they let the content speak for itself. Without content you are nothing. Without great ideas there is no hope for the future. It is the content that matters, not the format. That is why we do blogs, to pull content up through the rss straw, roll it around in our mouth-like readers, tasting each smooth milkshake post and swallow it down, totally satisfying our desire to fill our bellies with content.

Now, content can be anything from stories to videos to embedded PowerPoint. The only crucial element of content is that you are proud enough of it to consider it yours. That means that content does not exist in an answer that was just done to get it over with. Content does not exist in the unrealized half-wonderings of a before school speed post. Content exists in thought-provoking ideas. It exists in well-worded prose or original poetry. Content is the torrent of inspiration that is created when authenticity is the goal, and you actually have the time to do something.”

Blog reading is extremely interesting to me. I feel as if I am having a conversation as opposed to reading for information sake. I also find it absorbing – anytime I read someones blog (I should say a blog of value) I usually lift my head up an hour or two (in the case of the Ripe Environment) later, since I have also continued to read comments of others and their blogs etc., etc. Yet, when done, I feel as I have been exposed to different sides of issues, while just going to one spot (which of course lead me to many others).

Blog writing, on the other hand, I think is an art! I have a long way to go and assume that practice will help. It is much more free form than writing an article for a newspaper, or that “5 paragraph essay” that Morgante Pell refers to in his post, Teaching Brevity to Students. It is personal yet requires skill. In a meeting with some of my journalism students this week, one of the blog writers shared that is takes him 2 – 3 hours to write a post, which includes his research time, and that writing about something that you are passionate about is why you do it.

I thought this post was most relevant, Why Blog?. In this post, Joel Arquillos states, “Ask yourself, ‘So what?’ before you start blogging. Will your blog add to the world of knowledge and learning, or is it just for fun?” That question is a valuable one to ask yourself before you begin each post.