Ok, so you know about YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, Flickr, Delicious, Blogger and you are feeling pretty happy with yourself. You feel as though you are keeping abreast with all the latest in Web 2.0 applications. Then perhaps, like me, you probably need a reality check. Visit www.go2web20.net to see a directory of Web 2.0 applications, to get you healthy dose now!

When you check out the first page and you run your mouse over the icons, you get a brief description of what each of these web applications do. You click on a few that sound like they have potential and you may even become excited about the possibility of using these application to do something cool in your classroom. For example, Fotoll is an application that allows you to make your own opinion polls, which would have endless application for my humanities classes. Then you arrow down. There is another 70 applications. “Wow, there are so many great applications”, were my initial thoughts. Then you arrow down again. And again… another 10 times with another 70 applications each time. Then you just keep clicking the down button to see how many pages there could possibly be. It starts to feel like an endless abyss. I think I arrowed down more than 35 times before I got through all the pages.

Don’t despair. Just like we can never read all the books in the library (ok, so Joe’s an exception), we can never keep abreast of all these Web 2.0 applications alone. However, for the next month I am going to focus on new Web 2.0 applications with educational value and dedicate my posts to them. If there are any Web Applications that you use that we can feature in our blog, please leave a comment with the name of the application and how you use it.

Written by Callie Whelan.
Melbourne Beyond Chalk Facilitator