From the Weekend Magazine of Guardian Unlimited – a summary of Web 2.0 in the “Weekend Web 2.0 issue” – giving us a roundup of the creators of some of our most popular tools.
It’s great to see pictures of these people! Fun roundup. Matt at WordPress really is amazing – he just keeps on churning out those enhancements and developments – making it possible for people like me to blog like this 😉
Interesting to think about the future of the internet locally and globally, as Web 2.0 launches the digital future.
BBC news reports on the global Internet Governance Group. In a column for the BBC News website, Mr Desai said: “The forum will give voice to the citizens of the global net and help identify emerging issues which need to be tackled in the formal processes.” The forum is not a decision-making body but instead is designed to give stakeholders in the internet a chance to form consensus around key areas.
The four key agendas for the conference are security, diversity, openness and access.
[The forum] is about the future, the net as it will be some years from now and how we can give a voice to all who use it…… Nith Desai
Two things of particular interest:
You might like to Read the views of the global internet panel.
Well, this delightful picture of the Dharamsala wireless mesh and the latest addition to the Mesh at the Lower-TCV School shows how the expanding technology blanket is being wrapped around the globe.
One way that many of us try and keep informed about professional directions in education is by the sharing of ideas through blogging – and by tracking the blogosphere via our chosen RSS news feed.
Even so, good information slips through the cracks, so we rely on our exchange of ideas to help stay in touch.
So I had a Eureka moment when I dipped back into PopURLs this morning. If you haven’t paid a visit, check out the way this tool updates the action on digg.com, delicious, reddit.com, flickr, newsvine, metafilter and tailrank, YouTube, news, odeo, furl, etc etc etc. Very nice!
The post I want to highlight that ‘popped’ up this morning is from RealWorld Software Development on Best of the Best Web 2.0 Sites is a great compliation …. for now at least until things change again 🙂
Web 2.0 sites are cropping up all over the place! From Social Bookmarking Sites, to Real Estate sites, this list has only the best Web 2.0 Sites available today! What makes a site a Web 2.0 Site? Web 2.0 is the second coming of World Wide Web. New and improved sites that make the web their platform, provide users a way of interacting with each other, and organize and categorize their content are perfect examples of Web 2.0. Below is a list of web sites that are the best of the best!
After spending an exhilerating couple of days at the Global Summit, I am happy to say that the opportunities for more learning haven’t stopped yet. Now it’t time to dip into the K12 Online conference which is already well underway.
Nevertheless, the roundup of the Global Summit has been a bit hard to track, therefore for anyone who missed out finding or following the Global Summit, here is the link that will give you all the papers, presentations, podcasts and related links. You’ll want to save some of these for later!
But for now, if you haven’t already caught up with the news of the K12 Online Conference, go to it now! There has been some criticism of this initiative by some blogosphere gurus.
My take on this is that they are great leaders, but perhaps they could do with some grassroots involvement to see how important the material coming out of K12 online is for teachers and people like myself working with teachers who are wanting to learn more about Web 2.0.
I have promoted K12 Online to my schools – and at a Web 2.0 Workshop I ran last week was delighted to find that some teachers had picked up on the promotion, and were ‘cherrypicking’ the conference papers – and were very pleased with the information they were getting. I guess Stephen’s pessimistic comments aren’t true – at least not ‘downunder’.
I want to really thank those people who put up such great material in Week 1. This hands-on, step-by-step compilation of training and motivation via Web 2.0 is terrific and just what we need! I am not a great fan of online conferences personally, simply because I find it hard to follow online along with my usual busy day at work. But being able to pull down all the material during or after is ‘just the ticket’.
So the Web 2.0 sushi train has goodies from the Global Summit, and now K12 Online. Very nice thank you.
Some further thoughts.
I really like the idea of ‘grass-roots’ driven professional learning. After a couple of school terms promoting Web 2.0 via a number of routes, I am delighted to report that people are now ‘asking‘ to have a hands-on workshop – not formal training, but a ‘sandpit’ ‘lets learn this together’ approach.
In keeping with the informal but informative approach, and using Web 2.0 tools exclusively, I have begun to use delicious (with the tag ‘training’) (includes the link to set up the IE extension as part of the workshop – nice one!) and flickr to provide materials for these sessions – the point being that I provide these at the same time as working with folks to set up their own social bookmarking, and discovering what photosharing can do. Another one coming up this thursday….hard to keep up with the demand 😉
In addition, I held a full day session with school leaders of the Stanhope School Project – involving 3 schools. Greg Whitby was interviewed by Leigh Blackall about this. We have actually started the journey of change and this workshop was one of many more sessions to come. You can pick up a very short, very rough record of the day at Heyjude’s BlipTV.
Robert Cailliau, co-developer of the WWW, acted as Provocateur for Session 1. His aim was to explore emerging trends in a connected world and to delve into concepts of knowledge explosion and the ability of an individual’s brain.
I enjoyed listening to his session, in particular his ‘take’ on ideas and issues that have significant relevance to our work in education. He has, of course, an in-depth and longstanding understanding of ICT and ‘informatics’.
He asked
How will people cope with the world as it might be a decade from now, if that means ever more informatics and ever more ‘intertwinglings?
Interestingly he focused on science as a research tool, and the relationship between science and common sense. He suggests that the use of common sense in daily life is the norm, but the scientific approach focuses on observation of facts, formulation of hypothesis, predictions, hypothesis etc. He also recommends that scientific methods should be the basic tool for all thinking. We should use scientific methods and common sense in all subject matter, not just in science classes – BECAUSE – thinking is very ‘effort-full’.
However, Robert seemed to focus on science research as an empirical tool and did not include qualitative research processes, evidence-based practice, and evaluation as a process approach of change. Measurement tools of social research can enable thinking and conversation in order to create deeper understanding of our actions and our learning endeavors.
Robert reminded us that knowledge is increasingly becoming more difficult for the average brain to understand – things we know that the average person cannot grasp – e.g. quantum mechanics. There are things that cannot easily be explained, discussed, etc
Overall the audience was following his words closely – and his reference to SecondLife and other tools from a Web 2.0 environment was good to hear. However, his ‘take’ on SecondLife was rather skewed I thought. OK, only a few hands went up to the question ‘who has an avatar in second life’. Robert said that people go into interactive virtual worlds in SecondLife because
He then asked
Will education cope with people who are increasingly disinterested in the real world?
Oh dear – a very bad representation of the potential of SecondLife environments, and no recognition of the valuable education uses for which SecondLife is already being used.
So finally, because we will have to save the planet…keep learning and developing…we can only do this with
Real knowledge, good tools, and good leadership
ASCD SmartBrief Reports:
Google courting teachers with new tech resource
Google for Educators, a new Web site launched yesterday, offers guides and lesson plans detailing creative ways to use Blogger, Google Maps, Google Earth and nine other Google applications in the classroom. The site also offers links to a training academy that will allow teachers to become “Google certified.” Silicon.com (10/12)
Google says:
Google recognizes the central role that teachers play in breaking down the barriers between people and information, and we support educators who work each day to empower their students and expand the frontiers of human knowledge. This website is one of the ways we’re working to bolster that support and explore how Google and educators can work together.
The whole thrust is about ideas for using technology to innovate in the classroom. The Google Generation certainly deserves teachers who can think differently about the use of technology. But this list of tools smacks of the usual ‘tech tool’ approach – classrooms with more ‘bells and whistles’. Given the Google purchase of YouTube, the possibility is there that Google tools might actually reflect Web 2.0 think?
On the other hand, the list is a tantalising one to throw before teachers who are starting out, if only because Google has become such a ‘staple’ friend of teachers and students alike.
Let’s not forget the strength of the Read/Write web as demonstrated by this graphic from popoever.
Web 2.0 is about collaboration and remix, and syndication of data in such a way that anyone, anywhere can use use the results.
Web 2.0 does not lock the reader/writer into rigid technology actions — it intentionally forfeits that control in favor of much greater returns.
Let’s hope that Google remembers that! What I am particularly interested in is the concept of ‘expanding the frontiers of human knowledge’. Web 2.0 alone will not do this, nor even come close to facilitating this. Web 2.0 is a new environment, with new options, new possibilities, new dimensions to human cognitive engagement.
However, I see little evidence yet of Web 2.0 moving beyond into serious investigation of the semantic web and the new spaces for thinking deeply by extracting deep information! Web 2.0 Google tools for educators doesn’t address this at all – not even remotely.
Knowledge Strategy for school libraries
Who is going to guide educators in understanding cognitive information strucutures of the mind, of virtual and physical resources and new ways of interaction in a Web 2.0 environment. The technology evangelists in schools believe they have the answer!! Google the world, use wikipedia, and scrap the school library for a virtual information locker! Nuts! Or more frighteningly a solution as rigid and dangerous as ‘book burning’.
A hundred years before the advent of Hitler, the German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, had declared: “Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.”
On the night of May 10, 1933, an event unseen in Europe since the Middle Ages occurred as German students from universities once regarded as among the finest in the world, gathered in Berlin to burn books.
In the new era of Web 2.0, school principals and technology evangelists are attacking school libraries by ‘burning’ the books – rather than doing to libraries exactly what we have to do to class rooms …… Change change change change…. and learn from the leading digital repositories in the world that are using technology to preserve literature, movies, images, etc. I hate lots of school libraries, the way that they are run, the way they look, the way school leaders ‘abuse’ their potential in the schooling of our students. But the solution is not to close their doors, but to initiate a reform as comprehensive as the one that needs to take place in our classrooms.
What does our Knowledge Strategy need to become? I’m thinking about it! Are you?
While some of my colleagues are at the Australian Computers in Education conference in Cairns, I am catching up on another batch of marking for Charles Sturt University before flying out to HongKong for a very well earned rest. When I get back it will almost be time for the Global Summit, where I hope to see a few of my fellow bloggers.
John Connell will join us at Catholic Education, before the Global Summit, ‘in conversation’ and to inspire us with his work in Scotland. Might have a podcast to share afterwards if John is happy with the idea. If you haven’t dipped into John’s blog, I highly recommend it. I have no idea how one person can think and write so much, but be assured that you will be challenged by the diversity of his posts.
I’ve been doing some writing for the office in the last couple of weeks, teasing out ideas around future directions and our learning agenda. One concept that has tested thinking for a few people has been around the whole issue of learning management systems (LMS) and virtual learning environments (VLE). Funnily enough some of my colleagues get stuck on debating semantics and how to describe systems that we are rolling out for our schools. As if describing the system will somehow make it more worthwhile or more relevant?
In fact, what we should be focussing on is the Web 2.0 world of our students and their personal learning environments (PLE). Remember, its a combo-world. In Macca’s sales speak – we are constantly ‘upsizing’ and offering ‘fries with that’ because we have to!
Today we can deliver TO student expectations beyond the LMS and VLE that have emerged in recent times as the answer to learning for a 21st century technology world.
The emergence of Web 2.0 and social software moves us beyond the use of integrated LMS or VLE to social networking and education immersed in the future world of our students. No use debating which LMS to buy, or what a VLE is! Understand MySpace and you will understand the shape, meaning, value, future directions of student learning.
In fact, any discussion of the educational value of LME or VLE, and the integration or separation of social software must must be grounded in new ‘MySpace pedagogy’ and must include a genuine understanding by educators of the Web 2.0 world of our net-savvy students.
I suggest that we need a combination of a number of tools: a management system, personal tools and social networks. Our integrated solution requires this personal learning environment, because the very nature of what our students do and how they use online spaces extends their learning beyond the classroom and the present …. right into the future …. for life and for lifelong learning.
In fact, ‘Web 2.0 as platform’ is the natural implementation and platform for 21st century learning.
It’s time to dream the impossible dream and leap beyond the context of our current understandings.
Flexibility and personalisation are at the core of our re-purposing of education. If students think about the internet as a virtual locker, backpack and notebook, then we must create flexible learning environments which support the use of multipe resource tools, including Web 2.0.
If we do this, then we will have a learning framework that is Web 2.0, 24/7, global, contextual, personalised, real, physical, virtual, and visceral.
We’ll help our students be passionate about their personalised learning!
Now, off to HongKong 🙂
Extraordinary as it may seem, we are living through a significant part of world history, as startling as the changes heralded by the invention of the Gutenberg press.
Whether of not you need convincing that radical times are upon us, you can’t afford to miss exploring Imagining the Internet. Here you will find past, present and future; voices, predictions, visionaries and kids; as an ongoing record and dialogue of developments. Best fun of all is reading theVox Populi – crazy and thought-provoking!
The debate and developments around MySpace continues. Mashable reports on MySpace alliance with Seventeen as well as the development of the MySpace Guardian toolbar.
Seventeen has a Saftey Guide for Parents available for download.
We are working hard to stay in touch with Internet developments, and help our teachers and school community work effectively with the developing internet and Web 2.0 tools.
At a technology forum earlier in the year I was invited to talk about Web 2.0 and the shape of learning for our Google kids. Though not sophisiticated you might like to view/listen to the presentation. Thanks to Stephen Abram for sharing some slides for the presentation.
Following up from my post on Social Networking Explained
…..it is good to find that my group of schools will be encouraged to take a more postive approach to the value and purposes of social networking right down to flexible use of MySpace.
Back on Tuesday 17 May at a K-12 School Library network meeting, Jan and myself raised the matter of MySpace and tried to encourage people at the meeting to take a positive view of the opportunities that MySpace represents. My post MySpace and School Libraries resulted in some feedback to me from some teacher librarians saying that they had changed their view of MySpace and were now looking at how to develop a better approach.
So of course this recent post by Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day on Zapr reminded me of the highly flexible possibilities that MySpace or similar offer.
Easy communication and transfer of information is what MySpace is all about. Zapr includes a MySpace Zapr Link Tool . Zapr lets you create links to any files on your PC. Then you can send these links to friends (via email or IM) and they can get the files directly from your computer via their browser.
Is this important. You bet! Jan at Delaney College explains that students are using MySpace for storing their learning ideas and learning resources. They are bamboozled when they get to school and suddenly can’t access their own work, their own files, and continue right on with the learning from where they left off the night before.
You might like to add Jan’s del.icio.us to your network, or Jan’s del.icio.us work with teachers to your network. Thanks to Jan for sharing her enthusiasm.
The Knowledge Tree enables the sharing of research and innovation in global e-learning practice.
Edition 11: The Knowledge Tree Goes Communal , looks at what it means to be in community on the Web, that is, examining what is community or communion, the structures being used to create Web communities, the types of communities that are emerging, the processes used to facilitate online communities, the relationships being formed within Web communities and the uses of Web communities in education.
Nancy White of Full Circle and Associates in Seattle, United States of America, is featured in this edition with her article titled of ‘Blogs and Community: launching a new paradigm for online community?’. Nancy has long been a leader in the field of online community facilitation and online community development.
You can join Nancy through ‘live conversation’ in a live Elluminate session on Tuesday 26 September at 2.00pm AEST (Monday 25 September in US). This ‘live conversation’ represents a great opportunity to dialogue with Nancy before she conducts her national speaking tour around Australia from 7 – 27 October.
You can enter this session with Nancy an hour before the scheduled 2.00pm start.
judyoconnell.com 