Thing 33: Travel 2.0

Okay - I'm not sure that it's fair. I'm on spring break this week...and I'm writing about travel. I think I should be traveling!

For years I have used Expedia, Orbitz, and all the other online tools to book airline reservations and hotels. I've had some successes ($40.00 5-star hotel rooms on Priceline) and some failures (paid way too much for airline tickets to AZ) but overall I was feeling like I knew a lot about online Travel.

I was wrong! I knew nothing. I had often noticed the "fun stuff" off to the sides of the travel sites, but I always considered them to be advertising and I felt I should stick to my job of finding tickets. If only I had ventured off the beaten path into Travel 2.0!!

The articles in the "More Things" wiki gave me the knowledge I needed to explore further. And did I ever explore!

Travel Blogs: I loved "Lost Girls". I'll probably never get to any of those exotic locations, but it was so much fun to read about all the travels overseas. The amount of international travel a person could explore was incredible -and made me longing to use my passport again. It's been too long! I also really enjoyed "Notes from the Road" - although I read the blog postings from a little closer to home. The posts about the Spam museum in Harmony, Minnesota were a lot of fun to read, and very insightful as well. I also enjoyed Travelocity's blog "The Window Seat" although I found it to be a lot of advertising.

Then it was on to the review sites - and these were great too! I loved Sheraton's Share Your Story site and Boo.com. These lead me into the Travel Journal sites. These were incredible. I'm always at awe over those people who create incredible scrapbooks of their trips - but an online journal? What a creative and exciting idea! I definitely have to travel more. I enjoyed viewing all of them - but thought "My life of travel" seemed to be the cleanest and easiest to use.

Several elementary classes require their students to plan a trip. I was looking at each of these sites to see if they would be appropriate for elementary children. It would seem that they could easily assit with this project. However, so many of these sites are so filled with advertisements - and the ads are very adult. So I'm not sure they would be useful for kids.

That caused me to consider how easy it would be to set up a classroom wiki using these concepts. Then students could do their research, create their links, do their journaling online - and create their own classroom travel journal. It would be very exciting - and I would think you could continue it and create a wonderful kids travel site that would be the perfect online tool for families. It could include all of the things the best sites had: tips, pricing, ideas for fun, ways to get around, reviews, etc. - and all of it geared toward families with children.

I think that would be highly successful...and perhaps something the Pine Meadow Media Center could take on?