I know, I know. Silos in the work place is ick. We want people to be willing to go outside of their comfort zones and work with one another. To do great things together. Luckily, I’m not talking about putting people into silos, but rather putting some commonly used online apps into task-oriented “buckets” or “categories.”
My wife’s boss recently attended the National Association of Secondary School Principals conference where Chris Lehmann, principal at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia spoke. In his “School 2.0: Combining Progressive Pedagogy and 21 Century Tools” presentation he grouped a number of apps many of us find indispensable (almost all of which are free) into tasks we generally find ourselves applying these tools. His categories looked like:
| Research | Collaborate | Create | Network | Present |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RSS | Wikis | Blogging | UStream | |
| Delicious | Google Docs | Drupal | Skype | Flickr |
| Moodle | Podcasting | iTunes U | ||
| Wikipedia | Digital Films | IM | Voicethread | |
This list is certainly not exhaustive, nor do I suspect Lehmann thinks so. I also realize that some of these apps could “live” in more than one column (e.g., Delicious also fits in “Network”). However, I think categorizing these apps into manageable chunks might help the masses of hesitant teachers/professors and maybe even students to see more easily the practical application of these tools.
Feel free to add other popular programs in the comments below. Where does YouTube belong?
**Lehmann will be speaking at Web 2.0 Visioning Boot Camp for Educational Leaders in Philadelphia this summer. This “boot camp” is organized by Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and is limited to only 25 people. I suspect this will be a good one to attend.