Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

What is Web 2.0? When the Internet emerged in the early 1990s, it was a place where people could go to look information up. People looked up movie times, information, businesses. Eventually, people loved having so much information at their fingertips that formerly had to be looked up by hand or required a phone call. Sometimes, like on message boards, users could write and leave information, but it was not easy to do and pretty rare for most non technically savvy people.  This first Internet, also callled "Web 1.0" (after the habit software developers have of numbering their software) is also called the "Read Only Web" because most users could just read information.  The programming language of Web 1.0 was HTML ( Hypertext Markup Language ) and slow internet speeds also meant that uploading files would take a very long time and was not worth the effort.  So, users read information. Then in the late 1990's, some websites emerged, like  that let users do ...

I dedicate this post to my co-workers and friends at Westwood Schools. Although lately I've been snagging lunch in my room a lot due to a heavy workload, I admire them. I respect them. I believe they are the greatest group of teachers in the world at the greatest school in the world! I am honored to be among them. This is a post about where to get started with all of this overwhelming Web 2.0 "stuff" and is designed to be a "menu." Select the things that interest you and leave the things that don't. And remember, you cannot possibly take it all in. 1) Peruse best practices in your subject area. I've been going through my del.icio.us links and working to categorize it by teacher or profession. I will be cataloging and going through them more in the future, but take a look at the websites that you can use or what other teachers are doing. Keep a notebook handy to jot down your ideas: administrator all_teachers art_teacher bestpractices compositi...