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I wrote a “Guide to Quality Weblogs” for students to use as a rubric to critique each others’ blogs. It addresed every trait I could think of that goes into a quality blog, from theme design to post design, from content on the levels of the whole blog to content of individual posts, from connectivism via links to conversationalism via invitational conclusions in posts, prompt responses to comments, and more. I assigned each student to critique three other students’ blogs using this rubric, and leave their critiques not in the comments - who wants a comment for all to see that says “Your theme is boring and so are your ideas”? - but as Diigo annotations that only members of our class Diigo group can see. Again, “Digital Natives” my patootie: many students left good comments that rightly belonged in the “comments” section as Diigo stickynotes, again showing they have no idea of the very basics of this world. But they did it. We’ll keep returning to these criteria over the coming seven months.

Web 2.0 services are generating what is truly a personal learning renaissance.Here's a comment from teacher Elizabeth Davis at Classroom 2.0:"Following and reading blogs, participating in ning, contributing to wikis, writing in my blog, I haven't thought this much in years. It truly is an amazing phenomenon. I feel so intellectually alive. I'm inspired and challenged constantly. The blogs I read lead me to question and explore new tools and Websites. I haven't written this much since I was in school. It is all so exciting and energizing. For me, classroom 2.0 could just be about my own growth and learning and that would be enough."A good example of a free Web 2.0 service is Wikispaces. Here's a class wiki made with the service - A Broken World, the World War I wiki of a Grade 9 class. Their teacher comments:You are now "textbook writers." Your goal is to make a better, more interesting textbook than that overweight, boring, 20th Century history textbook you're now using. And to do work of such high quality that you can include it on your resume as another example of your academic skills in your "digital portfolio."Here are some other School 2.0 online services:* Diigo- for "social bookmarking" of Web sources.* Blogger - to create a class weblog.* Ning - to build your own social network]