How mad are your skills?

This is a blog entry I posted for our library blog. Just a bit of FYI - the ref staff have a contribution roster, so no one person feels the 'burn' of constant blogging, and to get a variety of viewpoints and entries.

If you are reading this blog entry, then you are quite obviously using a computer that has Internet access.

However, are you using or aware of many of the fun, cool, interesting, useful applications, sites or tools? Have you been engaging deeply in the cornucopia of the Internet, or lightly skimming the surface? Have some of you educators out there considered what you can be doing to engage with your students using Web 2.0 technologies?

Back in 2001 Marc Prensky wrote about Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. If you aren’t immediately familiar with that concept, it’s very, very basically about how people who were born in the “digital age” have been changed by technology, and how those of us who weren’t born in this age are coping (for lack of a better word) with technology.

A few years on in 2006, Helene Blowers came up with a program called 23 Things based upon Stephen Abram’s 43 Things

23 Things lists activities for participants to have a go at, and in doing so improve their skills and awareness at Web 2.0 technologies. Of course in the four years since the original 23 Things came out other people and institutions have picked up the concept and expanded on it.

If you want to investigate 23 Things further, and perhaps even have a go, here are some useful links for you.

Stephen Abram has on his blog revisited 23 Things.

Here are the original 23 Things. (Maybe you will chortle as I did over the incentive prize)

Cambridge has set up 23 Thing this year (with a useful looking tag cloud)

Finally, here’s 'A basic kit for the adult learner'.

Getting into the spirit, here's a few things I’m keen on learning to use:

Wp cumulus tag cloud generator

Creating my own content

What are some of the nifty Web 2.0 apps you use, or are going to investigate?