Annotated Bibilography Sample

Alexander, Bryan (2006). Web 2.0: a new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 2 (March/April 2006): 32–44. Retrieved April 18 from Educause Review Web site: http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/Web20ANewWaveofInnovation/40615?time=1208531641

Bryan Alexander is the Director for Research at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE). The author’s premise is that the Web 2.0 moniker is not well understood in higher education teaching and learning circles. He attempts, in a very scholarly written way, to explain the basic concepts, projects and practices of using Web 2.0 tools in higher education. He effectively explains such concepts as social software, microcontent and folksonomies. In discussing projects and practices, social bookmarking is highlighted for its usefulness in the academic pursuit of collaborative information discovery. Tools like Writely (now Google Docs) are also highlighted for their usefulness in allowing students to collaborate with peers and faculty on documents. While highlighting some concerns, mainly about the constantly changing nature of Web 2.0 services, many advantages for teaching and learning are discussed.

Classroom20.com Summary

I spent most of my time exploring social networks on the classroom20.com site and its accompanying wiki, classroom20wiki.com. This social network boast a membership of 7400+ members. The membership and topics are generally geared to K-12. However, searches like “higher ed”, “college”, “university” and “professor” would return limited topics on the use of Web 2.0 apps in higher education. One of the most interesting things about the results of the searches was that many matches contained links to other social networks more geared towards higher education, including many Ning sites.

I believe this site can be a very useful tool for educators looking for ideas and support for integrating Web 2.0 tools into the teaching and learning activities in their classroom (especially K-12). Some of the most useful aspects of this site are:

• Groups - The site contains a large number of groups that people can participate in based on specialty, tools and interests. For the newcomer to the site, it was helpful that the groups page listed the groups by the default order of “most active groups”. Elementary 2.0 and Distance Collaborations are the two most active groups currently.
  
• Live Conversations – The site’s companion wiki, classroom20wiki.com, hosts a series of live conversations about a variety of Web 2.0 topics that members can participate in. The sessions can be “attended” using a variety of tools, but Elluminate is the sponsor and preferred software for participating. The site also hosts recordings of the previous sessions.
  
• Live Workshops - The site also sponsors live workshops held in various parts of the country. These local workshops allow members to participate in the planning and presentation of the workshops and also get together face-to-face. As I blogged about in a previous post, one of these events is tentatively scheduled to be held in Chicago in July but there are very few details about the event posted so far.
  
• Hosts - The site’s main page has an area that lists and provide links to the profiles of members who serve as site hosts. These hosts are available to answer questions members (or prospective members) have about the site.

Going forward, I believe I’ll try to spend time on some of the sites that were linked to in my search results of higher ed topics.

New Digital Toy

Just a quick blog to mention a new digital toy that's on the road to my office. It's the brand new Mobile Digital Scribe by IOGear. Check out full details at the IO Gear site.

The Mobile Digital Scribe is an ink pen that doubles as a digitizer. It comes with a companion receiver device that stores up to 50 pages of notes that you take with the pen. You then connect the receiver to your PC via a USB cable and upload your notes. The included software can convert your writing to text or can save it as an image file.

When connected to a computer, you can also use the pen as a mouse. If you have tablet functionality in Windows Vista or with Microsoft OneNote, you can use the pen to make any laptop or computer act like a tablet PC.

I'm hoping to have the pen in hand by Friday. I'll post later to let everyone know how well it works in real life compared to the marketing materials.