Blogs, Wikis, MySpace and More: Everything You Want to Know about Using Web 2.0 But Are Afraid to Ask. Terry Burrows.  For classroom teachers, technology specialist.224 pages  $11.21 Amazon.com

Harry Grover Tuttle

Burrows' 2007 mini-encyclopedia contains a brief but thorough introduction to the Web 2.0 tools. When teachers want to know what Web 2.0 is, they can quickly glance through this book to get a quick introduction to the various parts of Web 2.0.   Likewise, when they hear a Web 2.0 term, they can refer to the book for precise and practical information. The author describes the following parts: blogging; bookmarking and tagging; communications; design; e-commerce; education and knowledge; games and virtual worlds; hosting; mapping; music; news; peer-to-peer sharing; personal management tools; photographs and videos; podcasts; portals; search engines; social networking; web-based office software; and wikis and collaboration. Burrows explains these Web 2.0 tools in a very precise and easy -to-understand manner.

The author devotes about nine pages to each Web 2.0 part. For example in the section on Bookmarking and Tagging, he starts with a general  Then he briefly writes about multiple tags, social bookmarking, and folksonomy. Next he has an in-depth description of how the bookmarking site, Delicious (delicious.com), works with many screen shots. He explains registering, bookmarking, viewing, adding tags,and  filtering with tags. Furthermore, he details the social aspects of delicious such as popular tags and tag stars. This reader felt very comfortable in being able to use Delicious after reading the information and seeing the screen shots. In addition, Burrows describes another bookmarking tool, Digg (a newswebite with social bookmarking and blogging) and how to submit an article to it.  Lastly, he describes about another tool, StumbleUpon ( a rating of websites, photos) by giving an overview and telling how to use its toolbar.  He closes this section on bookmarking and tagging with a list of about forty bookmarking and tagging sites.

Likewise, the section on Podcasting, can serve to give teachers a quick overview of podcasting.

Burrows starts off with the evolution on podcasting and then proceeds to how podcasting works. He explains how to receive a podcast including podcast software such as itunes, subscribing to a podcast through juice (juicereceiver.sourcefoerger.net), and selecting the medium for listening/viewing the podcast. He describes how to adding a  podcast. Then he informs the reader how to make  a podcast including uploading the podcast, having server space, needing bandwidth, and creating an RSS feed.  The writer  includes a listing of good podcast tips such as have a point, keep it short, have a quiet space, and make it as easy as possible for the listeners to subscribe to it.  Burrows ends with about thirty three podcast directories. Educators who read this section will feel that they understand the basics of  podcasts and realize that they can  podcast in a school environment. They will benefit from the advice of the school technology specialist for the particular details on doing podcasts in their district.

Educators should consider this book as a great overview to the Web 2.0. Although the publication does not deal with the use  of these technologies in the classroom, the educators can use the book to “come up to speed” on these Web 2.0 tools.  A few of the books applications are slightly out of date from its 2007 publication. For example,  the book uses the del.icio.us name for the now Delicious website.  Even with these minor shortcomings, educators can apply their educational expertise to engage students in high levels of  learning through using these social aspects of the web.

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