So what prompted these musings? There is a school I work with in Sydney, St John Bosco College, that runs a wonderful day for their Year 11 students and I came across something in their booklet that make me think.
First, I run a study skills session with the group. Then they break into smaller groups for the school’s GROW program (Glossary Research Organised Writing) where they work on writing styles, identifying key terms, marking criteria, supporting evidence, using scaffolds for writing, and advanced research skills. It is a really impressive program and takes into account the sort of navigation literacy skills that students need.
While waiting Year 11 to arrive, I was flicking through their booklet and came across a section ‘How Web 2.0 Savvy are you’. I quickly jotted down a few points to see whether I was savvy as the Year 11 students:
- Am I comfortable using the Internet. Yes.
- Do I have a web page. Yes.
- Do I read blogs. Yes.
- Do I write a blog. Yes.
- Do I have a Myspace etc page. No. Doh!
- Do I use YouTube. Yes.
- Do I use podcasts/vodcasts. Yes.
- Do I subscribe to RSS Feeds. Yes.
- Do I use Flickr or similar. Yes.
- Do I read/write wikis. Yes.
So I felt pretty good about how I would compare to a web savvy student. Mind you, 6 months ago prior to this subject for uni I would have only been able to answer yes to 3 of these!
But I started thinking – what else should be on this list? What else do we expect a Web 2.0 afficiado to be comfortable with? Continue reading