I think it's great that your students take your trust in them seriously and really take the time to research and add the best information to your site. It sounds like a win-win situation to me. I noticed on the library summer reading blog one of the students asked what you, Mrs. Harland, would be reading this summer, so I can see they trust your opinions and input; and in looking over the class research links, I found several that could help me with my own upcoming classes on media design and digital photography! So it's obvious that your library webpage is a great resource for students.
Did you run into any hesitation or opposition to Web 2.0 on the part of your administration or faculty when you first introduced the idea? Were there "old school" members who resisted having to learn new technology? What sort of instruction do you offer in how to use Web 2.0, for both students and faculty?
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I introduced the idea of Web 2.0 slowly to our teachers and administration. The students were ready for it before I was! The only opposition has been this: the social networking sites (facebook, myspace) have bad media reputations- and that is all that the administrators & some teachers know of them. All social networking sites are blocked for students at our school- so that adds a level of mystique of evil or inappropriateness that they really don't posess.
ReplyDeleteSome teachers have begun utilizing their own wiki pages (part of the library wiki page)- and they were nervous because they knew that students had access to their pages, too. I convinced them to try it- and so far, so good. I believe that students don't have time or interest in trying to vandalize a library wiki page.
At our Back-to-School In-Service in August I give classes to the faculty on how to set up a blog, use our wiki, or create a Google page. The classes are very simple/basic- more like a demonstration at how easy it is to use. Teachers who actually want to set up a blog or use the wiki will stop by or make an appointment with me- and we will sit down in the library and do it together.
Our school has now purchased a SharePoint server and we are loading it with Moodle (open source course management program). I think that this summer I will be spending a lot of time thinking about how best to use SharePoint & Moodle for the benefit of our learners & educators. I am very passionate about purchasing tools when they are USER DRIVEN NEEDS- and we have seen a lot of teachers looking for course management tools. So I imagine that this will be a success (but also Moodle & SharePoint will take the place of some of the library wiki).