Tonight I read a wonderful post by Steve Hargadon titled Web is the Future of Education.
He says..
I believe 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. I believe that we cannot even begin to imagine the changes that are going to take place as the two-way nature of the Internet begins to flower, and that even those of us who have spent time imagining this future will be astounded by what happens.

Steve discusses what he thinks are 10 trends in that regard that he thinks are particularly pertinent to education. I won't list them here because simply listing them wouldn't do them justice and you really need to read them in context.

Finally he suggests 7 steps that educators might learn more
they are: (with my comments in blue)
Learn About Web 2.0-
if you don't understand it and don't know where to start then start somewhere. join a ning, read a blog, join twitter, do something each day on the web that is part of education

Lurk-
spend some time but don't necessarily respond or comment. There is nothing wrong with just reading and looking

Participate - once you have checked out a few blogs or nings or whatever you choose to look at, have a go at participating. Post a comment, ask a question, help someone out with an idea. Remember we are all learning together.

Digest This Thought- if there is content overload, the produce more content. This works for me. I know that the more I interact with content on the web and then react or create more, the more successful I am in coping with the overload of content and ideas there are.

Teach Content Production - for me, as an educator I should be empowering my students to think and produce on the web. Doing so encourages and fosters thinking. But I have to teach how to do it, it won't just happen and/or there is a danger of too much superficiality

Make Education a Public Discussion-
we have to open up the conversation more, by posting more, by producing more, by teaching more, I hope we open up more opportunities for those who are stakeholders to talk, learn and discuss education

Help Build the New Playbook . This to me is the most powerful suggestion. We are in a position to actually teach here. This is not only about collaboration and communicating. There are opportunities here for deep discussions with our students, for challenging them to think, design, create and learn through others . It's about asking the right questions, creating the right opportunities, learning the right skills.


I couldn't resist leaving a comment and while the comment doesn't reflect my thoughts above, it adds a little more to the overall thought process I think.
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Hi Steve, I see that there is a wide range of opinions and responses to your post and that is exactly what you asked for, so I hope you are enjoying the conversation. 33 comments is pretty cool. I'm thrilled when I get 5 ;) But I digress. I think I fall somewhere in the middle of those who are sceptical and those who are wildly enthusiastic. I am an eLearning coach in a school and the majority of my work is creating opportunities and supporting teachers to enhance teaching and the learning with technology. Because I see real power in the engagement factor and the collaboration opportunities of Web2, I most often suggest learning projects that use web2 in some way. And I love every opportunity to do so. But we have a long way to go. I would say that in my school there are only one or two teachers who are actively using web2 tools and only one that I am aware of that is seeking collaborations and learning opportunities with other schools independently from my support. I have learned to be patient and to enjoy the small steps that I witness. It's a real dichotomy. Here we have this rapidly expanding web2 and its associated applications in education that seem to change and evolve overnight. And yet in many (most) of our schools it's baby steps that will take years.

John Pearce- an inspirational teacher

I attended the VITTA conference last week and if I say so myself I managed to choose some pretty amazing and inspirational teachers to listen to. One session that I really enjoyed was presented by John Pearce, a primary teacher in a Victorian school. Earlier in the day John had been presented with the VITTA Primary Teacher of the year. You know the deal, they start to read out the things that the winner has done and I must admit as soon as I heard things like this person has created some wonderful science resources, keeps a number of blogs, has his students create blogs and wikis for sound educational purposes that are recognised all over the world...well you know the drill. I reckon by the first sentence I knew it was John who was the winner. and it's well deserved. So I was very happy to go along and listen and watch him show lots of inspirational examples of how he has used these web 2.0 tools to engage and inspire his students. John very generously provided us all with a CD with many of his resources and ideas. I haven't yet had time to check it out, but it's on my list of things to do. There were a couple of little gems from John that I'd like to share. In explaining RSS feeds John used the analogy of a postman. In 'the olden days' we used to have to go down to the post office to get our mail. (without RSS feeds we have to go to the website, blog or wiki to get any updates.) And then they employed postmen. Now people didn't have to go to the post office. Their mail was delivered to them by the postman. (RSS feeds are the online equivalent to the postman) A cool analogy that is simple and easy to explain to teachers and kids alike.
Another great little gem was when John was talking about online etiquette and safety. He talked about the fact that he always posts the code of practice on the student blogs before they begin their online activities. He said that he used the "grandma rule" which is the idea that students should only post things that they would be happy to have their grandma read. How cute but cleverly in it's simplicity and clarity.
Finally the last gem I'll add here is that John uses RSS feeds for all his students so that he can be informed when students make changes to their blogs. This inspired me to do this with our students wikis. There were lots more fantastic ideas from John...thanks for sharing. Perhaps when I get to the CD I'll be able to add more.

Arthus-the new generation of 14 Year Old?

Arthus is an amazing 14 year old student from who blogs. I came across a post about Arthus on a blog called the Infinite Thinking machine, an educational blog that is contributed to by some very emminent educational commentators.
In this post titled "A 14 year old talked Educational Technology- Steve Hargadon reflects on the type of 14 year old Arthus is and how he uses and moves in the online world. His suggestion is that Arthus is not your typical 14 year old and I probably agree with that. I'm not suggesting that other 14 year olds are not as articulate and maybe as prolific as Arthus as I can think of a few that I teach at my school but none of them, as far as I know keep a blog or contribute to the online educational debate. I stress though " as far as I know". To be perfectly honest I would have no idea what type of online presence our 14 years olds have at our school. I do know that a few of them have bebo, facebook or myspace pages but I don't know what their online monikers are and I don't have any online dialogue with them. But I digress.
What really fascinated me about this post was that in the Notes section Steve wrote about where Arthus started his online journey and even more interesting was the habits and behaviours of Arthus as he interacts on the web. Much of what is listed here is a very mature response to some of the challenges and fears that educators and educational institutions face. But what is even more interesting are the 40 odd comments that have arisen out of this post. You must check it out as Arthus participates and again represents himself very powerfully in a new and exciting world of equality- he gives as much as he gets. An example I think, of the (educational) world continuing to flatten- I'm not sure that this conversation would happen in the classroom where often unfortunately the teacher has all the power .

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Being tagged has it's challenges

Maybe it is a smaller world than we think...in the last couple of days I have been tagged by two 'bloggers' that I regularly read. Thanks Cherie and John. The challenge is of course to then tag another 8 bloggers and I presume without tagging the ones that have tagged me. Now that's a bit of a challenge because when I read who they have tagged they are ones that I might have tagged as well. Tricky, you see.
But the task is first to follow the rules:
1) Post these rules before you give your facts
2) List 8 random facts about yourself
3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

1. I live in Charlton, a small town in North West Victoria and have lived here almost all my life.
2. I have travelled to Switzerland; Portland, Oregon; London; Seoul, Sth Korea; Cook Islands; New Zealand; sometimes for work and sometimes for pleasure
3. I have two children, Hannah and James.
4. Of five siblings, I am the only one who has remained in my hometown. My brother and sisters live in Bendigo, Brisbane and Zurich, Switzerland.
5. I teach at the school where my husband is principal. We have worked in schools together for most of our careers and seem to manage this very well.
6. I taught my daughter Hannah in Grade 4. The only thing she tells me she didn't like about it was that I never chose her for anything. I guess I didn't want to be accused of favouritism.
7. My great uncle, the later Gus Parish was once manager of BHP.
8. I grew up on a wheat and sheep farm.

And I'm not going to be able to tag as many as 8. I hope that people don't mind me doing it. I found it much harder than I thought because I know that a couple of you have been tagged in recent days. Not sure what this means for the progress of this tag but anyway here goes...

Now for the tagging
Vicki

Tom

Chris

Darrel

Adrian