Hmmm... thought I would post again sooner.
It comes as no surprise to those who know me that I'm one of the department/division nerds. I answer colleagues' questions, I manage the history web site, I serve on faculty tech committees, I've led training sessions for new software, I'm constantly, loudly, wishing for new versions of things-- I'm a nerd. I admit it.
In years past, I would install various flavors of Linux on my personal computers and play around with various other OSes and software packages. As I've gotten busier, I've scaled back my tech hobbies a bit, looking for ways to do things more easily rather than being thrilled by obscurity. I will, however, admit to trying to install OS/2 Warp on a virtual machine a few weeks ago.
Anyway, this whole "web 2.0" thing is pretty interesting. I like to think that it can prove useful for education, but at the Community College we have to constantly keep in mind the fact that our students are not always tech minded or, if they are, they might not have access to home computers or broadband internet. Even those with a home computer hooked up to broadband are not necessarily that interested in having constant data streams going. I regularly survey my online students and most of them are familiar with Facebook and Myspace but don't consider themselves heavy users. Other Web 2.0ish things such as podcasts, twitter, etc are rarely used, it seems
A lot of my more bizarre ideas die on the table. I tried piping some of my online course lectures to students via rss feeds, no takers. I am now going to pilot a twitter account for class business. I'll throw up announcements of it on BlackBoard and see if anyone follows it. I'm envisioning using it for reminders about exams, assignments, etc.
Why? Well, it's a lot easier to open up Twirl and type, "HIST-151, exam tomorrow!" than to go into Blackboard and do it. If students do follow me on twitter, they'll get that message immediately, as well.
Will it work? Maybe. Will it be useful? I'll let you know.
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