Jason Rhode, Ph.D.

How do you define Web 2.0? Here’s a quick video that provides an insightful perspective…

I’d love to hear your definition of Web 2.0. Leave a comment with your definition!

I’m collecting ideas and suggestions for a 1 month professional development course I’m designing that will cover social networking strategies for distance learning.

Here are a few details about the course…

• 4 week course taught as an advanced online seminar offered by Illinois Online Network as part of the Making the Virtual Classroom a Reality course series
• 4 modules, 1 week per module
• 5 to 10 hours per week of engagement and interaction time to justify 4 continuing education units that would be granted for it
• all required “textbook” readings should be freely available online
• Moodle will serve as the learning management system for the course, but other free social networking technologies can be incorporated where they add value to the course
• target date for course to launch: March 2010

What would the ideal online social networking course consist of? What texts/readings should be included? What technologies should be discussed? What activities should students engage in?

Leave a comment here with your ideas, suggestions, and resources! I’m also collecting suggestions on Google Wave at the wave titled, “Ideal online social networking course?” that is available by searching with:public tag:ion

Google Wave is a

…web-based application that represents a rethinking of electronic communication. Users create online spaces called “waves,” which include multiple discrete messages and components that constitute a running, conversational document. Users access waves through the web, resulting in a model of communication in which rather than sending separate copies of multiple messages to different people, the content resides in a single space. Wave offers a compelling platform for personal learning environments because it provides a single location for collecting information from diverse sources while accommodating a variety of formats, and it makes interactive coursework a possibility for nontechnical students. Wave challenges us to reevaluate how communication is done, stored, and shared between two or more people

(7 Things You Should Know About Google Wave).

Google Wave is currently only available in a limited preview but I’ve been fortunate to receive access. I’m personally using Wave to design a new online social networking course that I am working on developing for the Illinois Online Network and am finding the tool to have a lot of potential! More about that project in another post.

I have received a few invites that I can give out to others who would like to try to Google Wave. If you’d be interested in giving Google Wave a try, please leave a comment here with the email address you’d like to have the invite sent to and if I still have an invite available, I’ll send one your way!

Google Reader is a fabulous free tool for subscribing to and reading any RSS content. I personally subscribe to each student’s blog in my Google Reader account so that I don’t need to manually visit each blog to view the latest contributions. You should subscribe to my blog as well as the blogs of all the other students in our course.

If you’ve never heard of Google Reader before, watch this brief video that explains Google Reader in Plain English.

Wondering what exactly a blog is? Watch this 3 minute video that explains Blogs in Plain English

The power of blogging can be found in the ability to easily syndicate and subscribe to content through the wonderful technology called “RSS”. Watch this 3 minute video that explains what RSS is and why you should use a RSS reader to read blogs.