After reading the story about a school that has gone totally web 2.0, I was impressed and overwhelmed at the same time. I think that we are slowly (very slowly) on our way to changing education, but we have a lot of hurdles to overcome.
The first hurdle is time, our school gives us very little time for any type of professional development and has us teaching multiple preps 6 or 7 periods a day out of 8. Once you get these technologies incorporated into your classroom it will be easier to maintain. We need to be willing to work one step at a time with the changes. I like the idea of having a blog that lists weekly assignments and allows for comments. I think this would be a wonderful source that could supplement my online grade book to communicate with parents. It would also allow for students who missed work to have instant access to the lectures and a way to ask questions in open forum.
The next hurdle is getting everyone on board. The school described had all teachers work together as a team. This is a transition that must start at the top, with administrators working to encourage and demonstrate the applications of these new technologies. It would be wonderful to have a blog to access where you could see a list of upcoming meetings and have discussions about the current concerns in the school.
Other issues that would need to be worked through is motivating students to get started. In the web 2.0 school, the students described where already highly motivated. We would need to continue different styles of rewards for students who weren't motivated by "having more access to the wiki page." We would also need to work with parents and students to make sure that computer and internet access was at home to allow these students to complete online assignments and work together. If a student doesn't have these resources available out of school, we are putting a lot of stress on them to complete assignments.
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