Web 2.0 for Administrators

From LiteracyTentWiki

This page is dedicated to an individual Distance Education or Technology session of the COABE 2009 Conference.
To return to the general page for these strands click here COABE 2009 ALTN Sessions

To find out more about the Adult Literacy Education Wiki, please click here Main_Page.

For more conference information, please click here Conferences and Conference Materials
For more technology related information, please click here Technology.

If you would like to get more information about how to contribute to the wiki (including this page), please click here New_Here?

COABE 2009 - Distance Education and Technology Strands
Web 2.0 for Administrators

Abstract: Web 2.0 , the interactive web, can work for you! See a quick demo of some online tools such as blogs, wikis, online calendars, and online document sharing, and examples of how adult ed administrators are using these to keep in touch with staff, collaborate on tasks, and market programs.

Presenter:Marian Thacher, Director of OTAN

Presenter's Comments: I will show you lots of examples of how adult education administrators in California are using blogs, wikis, online documents, and other free tools to get their jobs done faster and better. Please come and share your thoughts and favorite tools!

Related Resources: All examples can be found on our wiki

Pre-Conference Comments/Questions:

• One topic that is not new in the world of tech but relatively new to adult education is social networking. My favorite social networking sites are Ning for group communication and collaboration, Linked Infor professional networking, and Facebook for connecting with new people both professionally and personally, and getting new ideas. What are your favorites, and how do you use them?

• I have just started working with a Ning with an advocacy working group. I hear a lot of people rave about the flexibility of Ning, but we have not developed that much yet. I wonder about developing common texts - I see how people can communicate via Ning, but how well does it work for collaborating on a common text (a letter to a representative, for example).

• Ning is really for "talking" with other people - sharing ideas, finding like-minded colleagues, etc. When people in a Ning want to work together they start an Elluminate or WiZiQ session, or link to a wiki.

Post-Conference Reflections: In this workshop, the first thing participants wanted to hear about was Twitter. Now that's different! I tried to explain how I use Twitter as a professional development tool. I follow links to what my fellow ed tech twitterers are reading, doing, thinking about, arguing about, and I've found lots of interesting material that I never would have seen on my own.

So I will just re-tweet here a post this morning from Ira Socol:

irasocol: Filosophical Friday - If our students could learn as much from a day in school as I do from a day on Twitter we'd be a really educated world.

Read more on my blog.