I just finished a powerful conversation with a group of great educators at the pre-conference session for TRETC. Ostensibly, my session was titled "Blogs and Wikis," but after finding out that most folks were at level 1 on a scale of 5, I shifted back to starting off with del.icio.us, which remains one of my favorite tools, and seems to be an easy entry point into Web 2.0 and social networking.
I also realized that even in a two-hour block, it is very easy to overwhelm people who are new to these tools. Part of that is because of the inherent value of these tools: their interconnectedness. Becauseone tool truly leads to another, it is very tempting to jump down the rabbit hole and get lost in Wonderland. Yet, people need to see how these tools begin to feed into and off of one another. Creating del.icio.us bookmarks that can then be fed to your blog, and then adding audio content (often known as podcasts) to your blog, and then peeling parts of that content off and attaching it to a wiki....you get the idea.
Ultimately, I tried to emphasize two things: find what is useful to you, and begin the conversation within your classroom and with the world.
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