What+is+Web+2.0?

Presenter: Jim Gates (substituting for Cheryl Capozzolli) Time: 11:30 - 12:15 Room: Auditorium Contact:

The term "Web 2.0" has been used for years, now, but you may have missed it. The web has morphed from being the medium where pages are stored, to the platform where we go to create and do things. You'll hear it called, "The Read-Write Web", as well. Instead of just going to the web to READ what others have said, we can now write our own content easily.
 * __Description of Presentation__**

In this presentation we'll take a look at some of the tools that make up this new web, and especially those that impact your math classrooms.

Cheryl Capozzoli's wiki - TONS of great links. Spend some time in here. (Math links) Jennifer Dorman's wiki - another TON of excellent links [|Jim Gates' wiki] - and a few more.
 * Some resources to explore later:**

A nice list of Math blogs - http://www.blogged.com/directory/education/math Some popular Delicious links in Math - http://delicious.com/popular/math Popular Geometry links -http://delicious.com/popular/geometry Popular Algebra sites - http://delicious.com/popular/algebra Popular Calculus sites - http://delicious.com/popular/calculus (Do you see the pattern? Just change the tag word at the end of the URL)
 * Some resources the world has found:**

Does this site correctly solve math problems? -http://www.mathway.com/default.aspx [|Real World Math] - using Google Earth for Math. Very nice [|More lessons using Google Earth] - also nice Using Google Docs forms for Math -a sample form
 * Some examples of web 2.0 sites in general:**

__**Blog for "What is Web 2.0?"**__

Jim Gates presented for Cheryl Capozzolli. I'm still deciding which of the two is my personal hero, but that may be irrelevant to this blog...

Jim began by talking about the various links that he's posted on this page. Cheryl's page is filled with great information and links. She truly is a Web 2.0 Guru! The two other wiki's referenced are full of great resources as well.

We then followed Jim to his wiki page and checked out his links to Fun Web 2.0 Sites. He described that Web 2.0 allows you to go to a site, build something, and then share it with others. There are so many opportunities to do this now compared to the fairly recent past.

On Jim's wiki, there is a navigation link on the left that takes you to his Fun Web 2.0 Sites. Not only does he have different sites categorized there, but underneath the basic links, he has posted some examples from several of the sites.

He illustrated that part of the benefit of the wikispaces page is that once a wiki has been created, you can have a discussion linked to it. This is a great way to involve students with what's being created by having them post their ideas as well as respond to the ideas of others.

The next topic was Google Docs. He showed an example of one of his own documents, and explained that the basic functions of the documents are word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Amazingly, with Google Docs, up to 10 people, on different computers, can edit a word processing document. Up to 50 people can edit a spreadsheet at one time. Google Forms can be created to have people enter information and gather data to be used on a spreadsheet as well. The spreadsheet itself can be formatted, much like a microsoft excel worksheet, to use formulas, conditional formatting, and the like.

He also somehow linked peoples addresses to a map! Google Earth can then be used to find distances and travel times between places, etc. When students are the ones entering data about themselves, or about an experiment that they may be doing, they will be much more interested in the results and the analysis of the information that they've provided.

For tutorials on using Google Docs, follow this link: http://tinyurl.com/bc4rc2

Jim then showed us a cool website that allows students, or teachers, to respond to a poll or to send a message to the website. The site is called Poll Everywhere http://www.polleverywhere.com/ Of course, we can't use this with students, because they aren't allowed to have cell phones. Cell phones are not useful for education. Just ask Jimbo.

After that, the website Real World Math (linked above) was discussed as another option to bring real world ideas to the math classroom. This tool can be used to measure areas and distances involved with objects in the world. For example, finding the area of parts of a crop circle that can be found in a field in Colorado.

The next website that we looked at was Gapminder.org. This is an excellent website to use for looking at world data over time about things like life expectancy. This is an excellent resource for connecting math with other content areas. For example, when you see that the life expectancy for Rwanda has dropped dramatically near the year 1990, a good question to pose to students would be, why has this happened? Other aberrations in the trends of certain data over time can be explained by the events in world history. (See also the page(s) and blog(s) for "The Power of Authentic Data" on the main Math wiki page for more information about Gapminder.org)

One of the last types of Web 2.0 tools that Jim shared was "Mashups" which can be found on his wiki page. Some of these sites allow you to see data about things like census records involving percentages of people with degrees or high school diploma in a certain year.

To wrap up, Jim referenced Cheryl's website again and pointed out her section for math resources. He reiterated that Web 2.0 is about creating and sharing on the web. There is truly too much out there to use in one school year, but don't let that deter you! Find something cool out there that you can use to bring your math lessons to life! The tools and resources are out there. If you can't find them on your own, ask your coach, ask your colleagues, search the web and check the websites on this wiki!

Great Presentation, Jim (and Cheryl) Thank you!