Why Web2.0 Is Critical to the Future of Education

The first session I attended at ICE was Steve Hargadon's spotlight session at IL-TCE (Illinois Computing Educators annual conference). Click here for more information about his session. The highlights of his information are the ten web 2.0 trends that will have an impact on education and the shifts based on those trends. I hope that Steve annotates this wiki with more information. He was extremely passionate in the delivery of his message, I couldn't take effective enough notes to really tell the story effectively. I'll start with my Big Three and my Intentional R&D List for this session.

For my "Big Three" for this session, I'd like to do the following:

• Check out diigo - Steve recommends this site as a way to keep bookmarks, annotate them, and collect information to use for collaboration
• Use twitter - already looked at this and belong - kinda don't get it, but I started using it a little during the two days of the conference.
• Get the rest of my family to use Flicker
• Start a Ning group for ICE - COLD (Steve is a consultant for NING. I belong to his Classroom2.0 NING.)
  
• Use chatzy - create a chat room during at least of my parent workshops.
  
• Look into using Skype in the classroom - can I find another class to collaborate with?
• MedlinePlus Videos of surgical procedures - This is really cool, but might be a little much for elementary school.

(That's more than 3...I'll have to prioritize these.)

That list seems kind of weak, based on the compelling information that Steve explained during his presentation. My notes had a few good quotes, one of which is, "The Internet is becoming a platform for unparalleled for creativity. We are creating the content for the web." The potential is there, but with few exceptions, we are not connecting content creating on the web to the educational experience of our students. Those teachers who provide those types of experiences are really the exception. One of the big reasons is because social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace were the first social networking sites. Educators didn't get the jump on the whole phenomenon before social networking got such a bad rap. People who are producing content on the web are doing so with no guidelines and no rules.

"Web 2.0 is the cause of this tidal wave. Web 2.0 is the solution." - another good quote from Steve. Examples of this are using social bookmarking sites to tag and share information with others. Another example is using a wiki to put together information about topics and collaborate with others to compile information and manage content.

Another example that works for me is tracking and reading bloggers. I follow about 25 bloggers and reading those blogs on a regular basis is the single most important professional development activity that I engage in. That's how web2.0 helps me with the tidal wave.

Here's something to look up....knowledge about career is obsolete in 3 years, meaning that the knowledge that one acquires for their profession is out of date in just a few years.