NSW LearnScope Blog & Podcast

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Web 2.0 - Social Software

The very term strikes fear in the hearts of all of us ( generalising a little I know ) however, my observations are that the internet is changing……changed…….. coined web 2.0.

Let me attempt to ellucidate some coffee fueled throughts from 12 thousand feet above sea level on the way up to meet the NSW LearnScope Byron Bay team.

Immediately, and upon months of reflection, I recall observing others trying to define what web 2.0 means , and like true educators, they interrogate and coin ways to box it all in using the very nomenclature that web 2.0 struggles to rid itself of. A zillion questions are coined and a lot of blank faces are presented with daggers hanging out of the back of those endorsing anything that challenges the current learning management hegemony.

“Thats about all we can do”……”I’ve no idea what your on about “….. ” web what point zero mate ? ” ………… ” it’s relentless and we cant stop it…. I dont really believe it will stay this way, open and so on but I’m being drawn into seeing it’s use for my learners “.

Others believe that the web has and is changing fast, taking on new dimensions and that to try and box the sharing and syndication of knowledge into a stand alone learning framework would spell disaster for any educational organisation.

We have mavericks saying that teaching is dead and we have early adopters jumping ship at the breath of an easier way to keep bookmarks online. We have people questioning the value in networking knowledge using dynamically edited wiki environments and we have resistance from the ranks of IT gatekeeping threatening to fold web 2.0 back to web 1.0. There are debates raging as to whether m-learning is just a fad and whether virtual worlds have any educational value.

We have debates occuring as to the value of wiki’s using a wiki to debate whether the wiki is really a wiki or in fact a proxy PLE.

We have little or no valid policy which encompasses the changes that web 2.0 imbues for educators whose options are otherwise limited in engaging a tech savvy cohort or so some would suggest.

We live in a world where PC’s are now core duo……in a time where where cyborgs wear bluetooth devices and where flashmobbing threatens cultural icons and political agendas……where my phone speaks to my computer and I now have eight USB ports and heaven forbid where E-learning and Web 2.0 are synonomous in geek week journals and educational oline forums.

Just the other day there I had a round table discussion with a bunch of seasoned e-learning colleagues about the uptake of wiki’s, blogs, moblogs, social bookmarking, RSS feed readers and a host of other widgets and gadgets that make our online spaces and places more compelling to return to. What I took home with me was a number of comments that still challenge me.

Feedback from my colleagues indicate that the use of web 2.0 technologies both online and mobile opens up a plethora of issues for those who are used to keeping learning ware close to their chest and content locked into repositories, discussions threaded behind logins and the face of the learning environment well and truly under wraps. Others are reporting that they themselves are battling a resistant core of their own personality, as to whether the ‘machine’ has consumed their lives and counting the minutes down to when they will return to their primary training in another occupation.

Web 2.0 seems to be frightening a number of my work colleagues. It dosent seem to be bothering any of the netgen group I also converse with though. Nor do industry view it as anything but a new and beneficial way of building knowledge . Take Nokia for instance.

Feedback also indicates that a range of early adopters in the last few years are now rapidly exploring how the syndication of knowledge and the use of web 2.0 technologies can be tapped back into the organisations that they are substantively employed by. In other words, having used open and networked communication, these educators are now seeing the value of enaging learners using a blend of both LMS and open courseware. Feedback also centres on the issues with digital rights management of student generated content, copyright allocations to such content and the privacy and confidentiality issues that emerge as they jump feet first into web 2.0.

The difference for myself in the last five years is that my observations now indicate that the operational spirit of education has changed somewhat drastically - from my own locked in courseware that I could only show my students right through to the way in which my learners chose to communicate with me. I, me, educator, can now author to the web knowing only a small amount of HTML. I only need a laptop, internet connection and lite-pro to entertain and dynamically engage large groups of learners anywhere anytime.

My photos and images of both my life and the people I meet and interact with can be networked and showcased and seeded and used and referred to and copied and re-hashed and arrive back to me in the most amazing array of forms. My mobile phone enables me to communicate with learners, project managers and team members. My phone is internet enabled so therefore the internet is in my phone. So does that mean that we should be really speaking of mobile web 2.0 ?

My social bookmarking, blogging content and mobile blogging sites are cited, re-cited, trackbacked, pinged and harvested to build other online environments. My working colleagues are using VOIP rather than email, SMS messaging rather than lengthy polite discussions, virtual worlds instead of redundant workplace simulations, synchronous communication from their PC’s rather than lengthy coffee stained interstate trips and meetings via conferencing rather than a tiresome tirade of taxi trips to and from an aging architecture.

I’m building blogs filled with posts and reflections and networked discussions and I’m authoring into a hundred different locations networked by bits of code and the like. And…..if i chose to go to the control panels of each of those online e-learning locations and in a fit of lunancy pressed delete ( are you sure you want to delete ?) then all of the dependent sites that were using my content to build their sites with ( images , text etc. ) would also lack my linked content. Or would they ?

Social web 2.0 for me is more than the ability to communicate cleverly. All of content and networked knowledged is published to the web and it takes servers to crash and wars to eliminate digital data which is probably spread elsewhere anyway. Web 2.0 is a way of working within a life based context.

Web 2.0 is constructed to attribute the contributions of others…to honour their contribution and to ensure that when research is conducted that this is rightly referenced.

Google your name or your tax file number. If you dont appear then your not safe some would say.

Web 2.0 - where educators meet, greet and make learning complete.

Stephen Parker is championing the cause and so is Vicki Marchant. Perhaps you’ve got a view on what web 2.0 means for your future and what you fear happening if they turn the net filter to block ’social software’.

Maybe it’s just a firewall issue you’d like to make comment on.

All in all, I believe we need the web 2.0 debate and we need it now !………a live event perhaps inviting some international guests to thrash it out panel style with a bunch of young people included.