Wednesday, June 9, 2010

John Steltz's Top Ten 2.0 Tools – 2010

A follow up to my last post: High school teacher John Steltz recently shared his personal list of Top Ten 2.0 Tools on his blog.  His experience and his list are informative for anyone interested in diving into social media in the classroom, whether in secondary or higher education.  His first step toward adopting these technologies was exploring the rather overwhelming site Web 2.0: Cool Tools for Schools (Steltz was overwhelmed by its comprehensive content; I was overwhelmed by its jarring color scheme, but don't let that overshadow the fact that this is a very useful site).  He then began to experiment, and has now used over 35 tools in his teaching so far.  The criteria for his top ten list were how user friendly the tool is and how well it presented itself to the class.

Perhaps most significant for academic educators is the fact that college students are coming into the classroom with these experiences from high school.  More and more they expect a dynamic and collaborative educational environment.  How might we in higher education most effectively build upon the foundations many of these students already possess when they arrive at college?

Image: nickrate, Web 2.0 Collage v2, 2010. Available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

2 comments:

john steltz said...

Elaine- I want to thank you for mentioning my blog post within yours. As a high school English teacher for 15 years, I have never heard comments from college educators regarding what the high school student is experiencing.

Thanks so much for reading and getting use out of the blog.

Elaine Paul said...

Thanks, John! You make a very important point about the disconnect that can often happen between high school and college education. I will keep my eye on your great blog for further inspiration, and try to consider ways that my facility can help our faculty consider the benefits of these technologies..