Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education
From the blog of Steve Hargadon (click here).
Steve believes that “the read/write Web, or what we are calling Web 2.0, will culturally, socially, intellectually, and politically have a greater impact than the advent of the printing press.” In particular he emphasises as to how difficult it will be to imagine the changes that will take place as a consequence of the flowering of, what he aptly terms, “two-way nature of the Internet”.
He identifies ten trends which he thinks will have particular importance for education and learning and then outlines seven steps which he thinks educators ought to be taking to make a difference.
I’ll outline the trends here which includes some points of my own (remixing as Steve points out in web 2.0 speak) but for detail I recommend visiting his post:
Trend 1: A New Publishing Revolution. The web is no longer a one-way medium where the user passively reads content but rather it offers instant self publication. In other words the web is two-way, it allows the user to create content and in doing so engage in creativity. I think the last aspect is the most important as it doesn’t matter what the outcome as long as the user experiences a level of creativity – educationally web 2.0 enables the process rather than the product.
Trend 2: A Tidal Wave of Information – and no time to act. As with the first trend this has been said before but it is always worth re-stating. As Steve notes for people over a certain age their childhood involved a lot of hard work having to look for and obtain information. Similarly for university education prior to web 2.0. Whereas now there is so much information on the net we have to spend more time sifting and filtering content in order to isolate quality material. And even when we ‘plug’ into trusted information providers, as I do through online subscription, the problem becomes another as we are now in receipt of quality information at great quantity. There’s not enough time to reflect on the information and adapt it or adopt it into working practice as necessary unless you ‘unplug’ yourself for a while and start to deliberately ignore incoming good quality content. It’s like being at a very good conference every day. Information incontinence.
Trend 3: Everything Is Becoming Participative. In other words everyone can get in on the act. Steve’s example is Amazon in which participation is integral to its system of selling books. As with Steve usually my decision to buy a book is based on the comments left by other readers. Another example is the move database IMDB (www.imdb.com) in which I check out the reviews left by joe public and base my viewing preferences / dvd purchasing choices accordingly. In each case generally I skim through the comments/reviews and gain an aggregated sense of the overall feeling for the item. Interestingly for both cases I found that the reviews left by the public can on occasion be more thoughtful and insightful than those left by so called professional critics, (so much so that last year I gave up on my 17 year long subscription to Empire movie magazine - as the content tended to be out of date and the reviews comparatively uninformed).
Steve also notes the tracking ability of Amazon in which the user’s browsing and purchasing patterns are analysed and recommendations are made accordingly. This is both powerful and sophisticated. For example for people who have viewed the same book you are currently viewing Amazon is able to show you the book they actually ended up buying, e.g. 60% of people who viewed book A went on to buy book B. I suspect in the very near future MLEs will be using similar people pattern processes for connecting learner’s to content (and its creator) which they would normally miss, informing module choices and suggesting career options.
Trend 4: The New Pro-sumers. This is in relation to the way in which knowledge is generated though collaboration between the ‘producer’, i.e. the company and the ‘consumer’, i.e. the customer. Steve points out that companies are increasingly eliciting R&D work from a broader public. From an educational point of view this could relate to learners generating content for a course in association with the tutor, particularly where the student is returning from field experience or is a current practitioner in the field.
Trend 5: The Age of the Collaborator. Steve puts this across very well “The era of trusted authority (Time magazine, for instance, when I was young) is giving way to an era of transparent and collaborative scholarship (Wikipedia). The expert is giving way to the collaborator, since 1 + 1 truly equals 3 in this realm..”. And with collaboration we have critiquing, communication and competition as differing views fight it out and merge apart or together.
Trend 6: An Explosion of Innovation. Giving credit to his brother Steve considers as how innovation rarely comes from a single individual but rather through the application of knowledge from one field to another, specifically when collaborators of diverse backgrounds are involved bringing in particular experiences. My thoughts are not necessarily related to this but it did get me thinking about possible future forms of knowledge generation. Future MLEs will, through adopting social networking functionality, encourage the student to create and become part of communities whose membership will be from a variety of backgrounds, life experiences and expertise. As such the student may seek advice, be influenced by and or collaborate with the membership to produce knowledge with a unique spin. I’m not necessarily thinking in terms of traditional assignments but with reference to the CPD, PDP, ePortfolio material.
Trend 7: The World Gets Even Flatter and Faster. Flatter in terms of knowledge being freely available for access and study. For example MIT have released over 1800 open courses and as Steve notes that’s only the start.
Trend 8: Social Learning Moves Toward Center Stage. Steve cites John Seely Brown’s observation in that TRUE (my caps) learning actually takes place in the hallway, through social interaction and discussion, rather than within the lecture itself, (www.johnseelybrown.com). Essentially according to Steve the distinction between the “lecture” room and the “hallway” is diminishing. Interestingly I’ve seen this reported elsewhere particularly within Second Life in which distance based leaner students actually inter mingle and communicate with each other in virtual hallways or lobby outside of the virtual lecture room (and after the lecture has been delivered). As a somewhat obvious caveat some learning does take place within the lecture however but, and if we’re talking about a standard vicarious lecture, deeper understanding is reached only through two-way dialogue and social interaction, i.e. with the student as contributor.
Trend 9: The Long Tail. Basically the end of knowledge creation solely through the specialist. With the advert o user generated content sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Flickr there’s a great deal of information sources out there (and obviously there are issues of quality). But likewise the freedom that allows such content to be easily generate and passed on to others means that passionate students can also become involved in knowledge generation and sharing. They now have a space in which they can create content but also through social means air their views, issue and defend challenges. Simply put the student can get connected with the subject and stamp their own authority on it. So it’s not essentially about the academic quality of the output but more about the internal development the student gets from creating the output.
Trend 10: Social Networking Really Opens Up the Party. Blogs and wikis led the way to user-created content but “the party really began when sites that combined several Web 2.0 tools together created the phenomenon of “social networking.”” In other words blogs and wikis although very empowering, and in the case of the wiki inclusive, do not push the information outwards. The reader has to visit the wiki or the blog. However social networking hinges on users getting together with shared interests and goals. As such information created within these networks flows towards and outwards from the users.
The points are above are summaries mixed in with my own observations. For the original post click here
