I’ve been sharing a lot of different tools with you here.   Why am I excited about them?

I was thinking about that this morning when I was reading about a presentation Will Richardson(who is championing what he calls the “Read/Write”web) did at a conference.

He believes that what is important about all of these tools is that we can use them to broaden our students’ audiences.   If you look at things that have them jazzed, most of them are about sharing with others via the internet.  

If we can bring that outside connection into our schools in whatever ways we can, then it adds a deeper element to what we are teaching them, and I think it adds a level of excitement and discovery when we are discovering new people and places and tools and connections along with our students.  I think it can make our teaching more dynamic.

 I taught English before I was a librarian, and we were always talking about how to get students to write for different “authentic” audiences.  But we had to “create” audiences most of the time by the way we designed the writing assignment(i.e. Present a proposal to a business, write a letter to someone in China, etc.).   Now we can easily have students make those connections for real.

That is why I am so very excited about these tools we call Web 2.0. 

Now, back to the pie break!