Web 2.0 and social meda - can we use it for teaching?

Web 2.0 can is about sharing information, expanding knowledge and communicating.

I am new to blogging, and when I discussed my blogging with a friend he said that blogging is "the most useless thing ever".  Maybe a typical hyperbolic statement from someone who does not know what it is, but I would probaby have said the same thing before I started writing on this.

However now that I have had time to think about it, I find that blogging is a useful genre, and that it can easily be used for educational purposes. Why does every report have to be written with so many formal rules? In the blog world, you make your own rules. Not only is it a fun way to learn things, but you also have the opportunity to share your work.

Schools have already been using learning management systems like Moodle, Its Learning, Fronter etc for a long time, and that has made is much easier for pupils and teachers to communicate with each other. Now they can send files or communicate instantly, and not have to wait until they meet at school. Those platforms have lots of Web 2.0 features, like blogs and forums and wikis.

When I was at a school for my mandatory teaching practice only a few weeks ago, I asked how they used their LMS. I was told that they only used it to send feedback to pupils on their assignments. What a waste!

I asked what they were working on, and he said that they were currently working on historical persons in the United States. I asked "why not make a wiki?" only to be laughed at.

Making a wiki is free of charge, and you can learn just as much by creating a wiki as you would creating a report. Not only that, if you create a wiki, you will have the information forever, and if someone wants to, they can expand it. Who knows, within maybe a few months or maybe a few years the school could actually have had a small-scale wikipedia of their own.

Do you use Web 2.0 actively in your teaching?