Chapter 6 Summary

Andrew Thonstad
Richardson, Will (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Chapter 6: The Social Web: Learning Together As has been discussed many times in this book, the world wide web has become social in nature. This chapter delves into that idea even more. In this chapter, Mr. Richardson describes three of the “hottest” applications available”: Twitter, Diigo, and del.icio.us. I must admit that I have not used (and have not had the urge to use) these programs.

Twitter is a mini blogging tool that lets users share 140 characters of type in their tweet. Your tweet goes out to those that are part of your group. On the news we hear of actors, athletes and other famous people tweeting the events of their lives to others. Even after reading this section, I am not sure how to successfully implement Twitter in my classroom.

Social bookmarking services allow users to tag websites with keywords to assist others in searching. Many sites have a number of tags or keywords attached to them and users can see who else has tagged the site with the same keywords. Two of front runners for social bookmarking are Diigo and del.icio.us.

Diigo is a tool that allows users to construct their own little piece of the web. I just spent the last minute setting up an account and it could not be easier. I think that setting up a page for classroom use would be beneficial. The fact that you can save the original view of a web page is wonderful. Now I have to find the time to learn the system and see how it can benefit my classroom. Diigo focuses on saving content. del.icio.us, on the other hand, is about sharing links.