The Read/Write Web Tools

Most of the Read/Write tools listed were pretty familiar to me. I’ve learned about many of them; however, in just the last few weeks while doing research for various projects. What came as a surprise to me was not the names and functionality of these tools, but the widespread use of them in today’s classrooms. I had no idea so many teachers are incorporating these tools into their lessons. Perhaps, it pales in comparison to those school districts that cannot afford the technology, but nonetheless, it’s good to see so many students being able to take advantage of the technology that is in place.

I find that I’m familiar with much of the technology, but not necessarily the names. For example, “trackbacking” and “pingbacking” are new terms to me, but I knew of the concept. I knew of Wikipedia, but didn’t know that “wikis” came in the form of other sites as well. Flickr was a new tool for me as well. I’ve heard of the other comparable online digital photo tools, but didn’t realize that so many of them were used as social networking sites to share photos.

Other new tools I learned about while doing these readings were Library 2.0 and School 2.0. I’ve only just recently heard of the term Web 2.0 so all of the “2.0” categories are new to me. Software programs called “aggregators” are a new term to me also. I actually use “My Yahoo!”, yet didn’t know the term for it. This digital newspaper that can collect and display information sources from a variety of sources has proven to be invaluable to me.

Google Docs is another R/W tool that allows users to create free web-based word processing documents and spreadsheets. These docs are then able to be shared and collaborated online. This tool is considered a R/W tool because users can read others’ documents as well as create their own. I had neither heard of nor used this tool, but I will probably begin to use it now.