Blogg-Ed Indetermination

Alan November (wiki citation) is a welcome fixture at educational conference around the world. I’ve heard him speak several times myself, and I’ve always come away with something new, so it was with great anticipation that I started his latest book, Web Literacy for Educators (Amazon citation).

After a few chapters, I began thinking “is this it? November has been talking about this stuff for years… There’s nothing new here!”

Granted, teachers with little or no knowledge of the web (for example, what are the elements of a URL) may find this to be a useful guide. And it is charming to find someone that still uses Alta Vista as a search engine. I had better hopes for Chapter 6 on Blogs, Wikis, Pods casts and Wikis, but these important tools are dismissed in a mere fifteen pages with little revelation aside from an anecdote or two describing how a teacher is using them.

Where this book may find an audience is with librarians who find themselves pushed to teach students about information literacy and using something other than a card catalog to search for resources. (I suppose a few are still around in remote parts of the earth.)

If you’d looking for something about Web 2.0 literacy for educators, look elsewhere, such as John Hendron’s RSS for Educators: Blogs, Newsfeeds, Podcasts, and Wikis in the Classroom (available from ISTE or Amazon.

Coming up next: Another disappointing read….