Talking Web 2.0 with schools

I got to do something really interesting today, in my Career Practicum job, which I work for our school district doing video and tech related projects, I was able to meet with the electronic tech (ET) administrators to talk a bit about web 2.0

Recently our school district has purchased web space for experimental student projects, I put together a document covering some open source tools that the school should use, and started with wordpress, where I showed them my blog, I clicked on my flickr, but the school blocks flickr…(really embracing technology!) I talked about how the schools could benefit from using wordpress as a blogging platform for students and teachers.

I also was able to talk about MediaWiki, which is the software built for Wikipedia, it was great for me to give Wikipedia a shoutout, since it catches a bad rep in school. Our teachers are always saying, “Anyone can go in there and write whatever they want.” They get so scared of anything that isn’t a 1000 book published in the 70s. Wikipedia is an awesome tool and I was able to show how wikis could be used in school.

Showing some media software was great too, I talked about Broadcast Machine, and mentioned the use of torrents too. I told the ET’s that creating a torrent file within Broadcast Machine, would cut down on bandwidth costs immensly, and you could host the files on machines around the school network, a flawless plan. They really liked the torrent idea, which I thought was awesome, but was worried about its integration with copywritten works. I assured them that the school blocks all sites that hosts illegal files (plus a bunch of other sites)

In closing I expressed my concern with the school’s inability to embrace Web 2.0, we talked about all of these great opportunities, but we’re still blocking students from email. Is it any wonder students are searching for proxies at school. I really caught the attention of the ET’s and in my last 5 minutes of discussion I showed them Digg, which was crazy that they hadn’t seen it. Showing off Digg was a breeze, they were really impressed and I think I was able to stress social networking to our admin, which is really the most important part of Web 2.0.

It was cool being an 18 year old student telling grown men about the changing Web, I really appreciated the opportunity and hope that they go after all the open source software out there, and become a part of it.