The Web has entered a new era of sophistication. There are great numbers of free, powerful Web 2.0 applications that help teachers teach, collaborate, share, connect, and participate in an online learning community. To help Mississippi Business Education Teachers and Educators learn about some of the powerful Web 2.0 applications that have tremendous potential in business education classrooms, I was invited to give a presentation entitled, “Great Web 2.0 Applications for Business Education Teachers,” at the Mississippi Business Education Association 2009 Fall Conference in Hattiesburg last week. The presentation went well. I thought this presentation might be helpful for other teachers as well. Here is my presentation delivered at the 2009 MBEA Conference on September 18, 2009.
I don’t know If I said it already but …I’m so glad I found this site…Keep up the good work I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say GREAT blog. Thanks,
A definite great read..Jim Bean
I heartily agree with JimmyBean that this is a great website with a ton of resources. I appreciate Dr. Yuen’s diligence in posting, almost on a daily basis, all of these really useful tools and sites. I found this by searching the tag cloud, and decided to post my two main gripes about most of the Web 2.0 tools, and one that I hear constantly at conferences and workshops.
The first gripe concerns all of the accounts that are required to access and use these tools. It seems to me that nearly every single application provider makes the user create an account with an ID and password, of which we already have to keep track of too many. While I am not a real Google fan, I do like that one account gets me access to a large number of different applications. I find it rather tedious to set up, keep track of, and then manage all of these separate accounts. While I do realize the marketing necessity of these companies collecting my information, there has to be a more efficient way then separate access accounts.
The second gripe concerns the increasingly large number of Web 2.0 applications that are touted to be free, when in reality, they are either just trials or stripped down versions, opening the door for an onslaught of sales pitches and gimmicks. During a conference last week I looked at several that Dr. Yuen speaks of in his presentations. Several were on limited trial versions, often with limitations that preclude their use, like Animoto. Several others were not trials per se’, but stripped down versions. In all the cases users either had to pay a per-use fee (Animoto), or purchase a ‘full’ version. Again, while I realize companies must make some money to survive, their advertising could be a little more up front.
This becomes an issue when teaching teachers to use these applications and then seeing their frustration when the programs do not work as promoted. So, thanks for listening…