Final Reflection on Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 tools

First let me say I thought knew a little a bit about Web 2.0 apps.  My experience was with Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and just recently I started to dabble a little bit in Twitter. However, in the last six weeks, I have learned and experienced so much more with these and other Web 2.0 tools that I definitely want to teach what I have learned.  My thirst to learn more about Web 2.0 applications is even greater now.  These tools afford the teacher, students and teams the ability to remotely share, communicate, contribute, and collaborate on class assignments and projects.  In today’s connected environment, students absolutely must learn how to work and collaborate remotely with geographically separated team members.  The knowledge and ability to use and educate others on how to use these and other  Web 2.0 tools is essential to helping our students be competitive in today’s connected work environment.  One of the tools that really impressed me was Google Docs.  The ability of me and my team members to collaborate on a document in real-time was pretty amazing.  The capability of this tool to allow me and my team members to actually see each other’s edits on the same document, while we were working from different locations was fantastic!  I have collaborated with teams at work on documents using Microsoft SharePoint, but I could not see the edits being done in real-time.  This one feature that I will definitely look for in future technologies that I teach.  The ability to collaborate in real-time.  One of the pitfalls that I did make note of is that in order to use these great tools, you have to have the hardware that has the capacity to use Web 2.0 tools.  This starts with an internet connection with enough bandwidth, an up-to-date commuting device (desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphone) and an updated web browser.  Another pitfall, which members of my generation might find intimidating is a working knowledge of web security.  More often than not, people who don’t use or delve into Web 2.0 tools, don’t do so because of the insecurity of exposing too much information.  However, I have learned from this class that there are ways to use these tools and still maintain a secure environment.