At an inservice some weeks ago, a group of us shared ideas about changes in the digital envirnoment of our students that is impacting on their lives – and which must be understood by educators if we are to adapt our teaching to include more collaborative tools.

Our introduction to Web 2.0 was designed to alert our teachers to a different web world – well beyond the comfortable world of websites and smart searching of the internet. We provided this summary sheet of these ideas to encourage them to do a bit of looking. I admit, we could have created a Lense in Squidoo – maybe next time!

Web 2.0 is an 'hot topic' in the blogosphere – but is not yet a hot topic in your average school. Just today I came across yet another forum being promoted amongst our schools –Learning in an Online World.

Quite correctly the promo considers many changes that have occurred since 2000, and states that "Major challenges still exist. Continued collaboration and sharing and best practice is crucial to achieve our shared vision of all schools confidently using ICT in their everyday practices to improve learning and teaching."

This forum will certainly showcase some interesting things – because so many teachers and schools still have a lot to learn about the potential of Web 1.0 technologies. However, as far as I can see there is nothing Web 2.0 about the Forum. There is no obvious reflection on the digital world of our students, nor the use of Web 2.0 technologies for social networks, and supporting teaching and learning. Of course, these concepts may emerge within presentations.

Somehow I think that much is being missed in a forum which is discussing learning in an online world. While some very important things will be covered, there is just so much more to consider than learning management systems (MyInternet), electronic whiteboards, video editing, learning objects, Kahootz, ipods, wikki versus Britannica (ho hum! I wonder how up-to-date this presentation is?). The focus is very much on tools to use, rather than ways of thinking and operating in a socially networked world.