Talking with the EdtechCrew

A couple of nights ago I had the enormous pleasure of taking part in a podcast created by the EdTech Crew. The 'crew' is composed of an old friend whom I have known for probably the last 10 years. Darrel Branson, or ictguy as he is known in the Web2.0 world is a highly accomplished educator who works with a range of primary and secondary schools in Mildura, a thriving city in northern Victoria. Darrel is one of those quiet, unassuming, wonderful people who is always there to give a helping hand when you just can't work something out. His presence on the web is increasing at an exponential rate and lately I seem to see his name appearing in so many contexts in the online education community . Every week Darrel and his partner in crime Tony Richards from itmadesimple.com produce a very professional yet typically Aussie podcast called EdTechcrew . I say typically Aussie because the 'flavour' is relaxed and conversational which is the type of podcast I enjoy. And professional because there are always follow ups and lots of links and helpful information from each podcast that is produced. Anyway as a guest on their show, I talked about the way we are using wikis at Wedderburn. Although a little nerve wracking initially after a while, it felt like just any other conversation that Darrel and I have had over the years. If you have to make a choice about the number of podcasts you subscribe to then, IMHO, Edtechcrew should be up there in the top 3.

The Web 2.0 community

One of the very few drawbacks that I can see about the exciting things that are happening around the explosion of Web 2.0 in education is the amount of time that can be 'wasted' (not) in reading, talking and thinking about what is out there and how to use it to our advantage as educators.
The last two weeks have been our Victorian school holidays and I'm a little embarressed to say that I have taken very little advantage of the usually beautiful spring weather that we have in September because I have been glued to my computer either catching up on projects that have looming deadlines or Skype-ing (Skypename-annieb3525) with other 'online geeks' or as I prefer to think of them, new online friends such as Chris Betcher who is an Australian teacher currently on a teacher exchange in Canada and David Westaway a teacher in Ballarat, Australia.
But I guess the thing that I think is key is not even how we use them but how we educate our kids to discriminate and evaluate exactly what is out there.
To that end one of the things I am participating in is a podcast with Chris which you can hear by going to this link.