Thing 14 - Web 2.0 Tools

OK - I couldn't help myself - I looked at all of them and plan to return to several over time. A pretty cool assortment of tools with so many possibilities.

When I'm looking at these tools I'm usually looking from the perspective of how could a teacher use this in a classroom as a teaching tool or how could a teacher use this to interact with kids. As I'm testing these tools "from home" my enthusiasm for using them is being somewhat tempered with the knowledge that several of them will not function as described in this "The ABCs of It All" Blog post or will be blocked because of our filter. This begs the question - should we open the filter and make it considerably less restrictive knowing that with the good will also come some bad?

As an example lets take Google. Fantastic tool set that if unblocked would give kids access to not only its wonderful tools but would also allow them to search Google Images. Google Images search capabilities will find more images of every kind than any other Image browser I've found on the web. It's actually also a fantastic tool but if inappropriate searches are made will find images you don't want the kids finding. The way Google Images works is it caches thumbnails of images which may be blocked by our filter when the thumbnail is clicked on but does give you the small unfiltered thumbnail preview. There is technically no way for us to block these thumbnail images without blocking all of Google. If we unblock Google the end result would be access to wonderful tools but teachers would need to be that much more vigilant in monitoring what their kids were doing while on computers.

One of the tools I discovered that I plan to use is PollDaddy and thought I'd try it out for a spin with the above topic in mind. Which would you choose knowing the options we have? Give me your vote and feel free to have others read and vote as well.