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Richardson used these and other examples during the workshop to illustrate how profoundly the Read/Write Web affects teaching. “We must become connectors,” he told the participants. “There are lots of people out there who know more than we do about our subject, and we have to start being OK with connecting our kids to them.”

The Internet was once mostly about surfing from one static Web site to another while collecting or viewing data along the way. But now users share information, collaborate on content, and converse worldwide via social-software tools. Such tools “leverage the Web into a learning environment as well as an information source,” says Will Richardson, a former high school teacher and current edu-tech consultant. “It’s about the give-and-take,” he adds, “that engages students more in their own educations as active content producers and improves teachers’ professional development.” Richardson’s favorite “tools” are listed and described below, as are the names of his preferred instructional Web sites.

Wikis

A wiki is a communal, subject-specific Web site where users are free to add and/or edit content. When it comes to Internet-based collaboration, there’s nothing easier to use, according to Richardson. In schools, wikis—some of which are password-protected—enable groups of students, teachers, or both to gather content and share written work. Some classes create their own textbooks and resource sites. One great example is “High School Online Collaborative Writing.” For instructional tips, check out Stewart Mader’s blog “Using Wiki in Education.”

Blogs

Perhaps the most powerful Internet tool is the Weblog, or blog, an online journal that is continuously updated by its author or authors. Blogs are Web sites that facilitate instantaneous publication and allow for feedback from readers. They’ve been used to form professional development communities, both within one school and across continents. One notable edu-blog worth visiting is Clarence Fisher’s “Excellence and Imagination.” Instructional blogs include Anne Davis’ “Improving Instruction Through the Use of Weblogs” and Stephen Downes’ “Educational Blogging.”

RSS

Real Simple Syndication refers to what are called “feeds”: programs that take content from various Web sources—news sites, blogs, online journals—and deliver it in summarized form to the Web user. Richardson calls RSS “the new killer app for educators” because it enables them to collect specific data without having to sift through innumerable Web and print pages. Richardson’s “RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators” is available on his own site, weblogg-ed.com.

Social Bookmarks

Through social bookmarking, Web users share their sources of information by allowing anyone to copy their RSS feeds. So an educator, no matter how unfamiliar he or she is with online technology, can easily archive, for example, all of Richardson’s sources of research via sites such as Del.icio.us and Furl.net. This allows students and teachers to build Internet resource pages they can share and pass on to future classes. For tips on social bookmarking, check out Andy Carvin’s “Tag-You’re Delicious!” at PBS Teacher Source and D-Lib Magazine’s “Social Bookmarking Tools (I).

Podcasts

Podcasting enables Web sites to provide visitors with audio and/or video recordings that can be listened to and watched at any time. The results range from amateur radio broadcasts—by 15-year-old Matthew Bischoff at Odeo.com, for example—to sophisticated video productions, such as those produced by high-schoolers in San Fernando, California, at Sfett.com. “Podcasting in Education” at the Halton District School Board (California) site and blogger Gardner Campbell’s “There’s Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education” can help you get started.

Social Networking Sites

Richardson calls these “social content-sharing sites,” the most notable being MySpace.com, where members create profiles, network, and share opinions, photos, and audio-visual content. But there are about as many social networking sites as there are interests, and among Richardson’s favorites are Flickr.com, where photographs are posted and shared, and the video-sharing site YouTube.com.

“For educators,” Richardson said, “this means getting our children on board with Web literacy, or they’ll be left behind in the global economy.” Then, in a reassuring tone, he added, “But the task is far more exciting than daunting.”

What’s needed now is what another conference presenter, Darren Kuropatwa—a Canadian high school math teacher—terms “liquid learning. We are awash in so much information that we have to learn how to manage as it keeps expanding.”

“There are over 1 billion people connected to the Web,” he told the crowd, “and that will double within a decade. The Internet contains a trillion links on 100 billion Web pages, with 7 million pages being created daily. Where there were only a handful of people blogging in 1999, there are over 50 million blogs today, and 50 new ones created every minute.”

“The new Internet isn’t about technology anymore,” Richardson told the teachers, librarians, tech coordinators, and administrators from across North America, each sitting in front of a monitor in a computer lab at Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts. Gone, he said, are the days when Web publishing involved manipulating HTML code and other complicated technical processes. New software is mostly “open source,” meaning it’s available online for free. “Instead, it’s about your imagination,” Richardson said, “about thinking, quite literally, ‘out of the box’ of the traditional classroom.”

Will Richardson, a high school English teacher turned edu-tech consultant, wants to share the good news about blogs, wikis, and podcasts. They could, he believes, change your life.