Thing 5: School 2.0

According to Susan McLester at techlearning.com, as many as 55% of children 12 to 17 years old use social networking for anything from school-related to simple social-related searches. Personally, I believe 55% is a low estimate. The reality is the age of technology is here, and it's expanding and offering more to educators and students by the day.  What is school 2.0? First understand, according to the Atomic Learning video, the internet was first web 1.0. This meant the internet was accessible to read, but not to do much else. This was also the internet of the prior millenium. Web 2.0 is fast, easy, and cheap. Not only is there much to read and find, but it's simple to build webpages, write blogs, and have social networks. School 2.0 takes advantage of this accessiblity to aid educators and students in the classroom. What are the benefits to school 2.0? David Jakes of techlearning.com defines these benefits as "individual, continual, and highly customized experiences"   "connecting individuals to form a community of learners" and "all contribute and collaborate in what amounts to a global discussion of ideas." Some keywords here would be "continual," as the internet offers social networking and information at any time of the day or night, Monday through Sunday, "connecting" "community" and "global," as in world wide web, literally.
The future is here, and it's fast. At this point it is imperative for educators to keep up with technology for the child to gain the best access to knowledge available, throughout the world from many different sources. We must keep up with our technology, so that our children keep up with the world. That is school 2.0 to me.