http://flickr.com/photos/7447470@N06/1345266896/

INTRODUCTION TO

WEB 2.0

The Internet – more than just a book

“The Read/Write Web”(Tim Berners Lee)

Original photo by Hummanna.

eLearning 2.0/Web 2.0(Stephen Downes)

Elearning 1.0:• static packaged content • little true interactivity and learner input and • very little contact with a tutor.• represented by Learner Management Systems. (eg WebCT,

Blackboard, etc)

Elearning 2.0:• more student-centred• centred around a Personal Learning Environment using social software. • students generate and share content. • they interact not only with teachers and their peers, but with anyone in

the world they can learn from.

(this description courtesy of Sean Fitzgerald)

Expansion of the ‘Grammar of the Internet’

Javascript, XML, PHP, Ajax

Increased interactivity

and usability of Internet

pages

Image Plate from Owen Jones' 1853 classic, "The Grammar of Ornament". Photo by EricGjerde

PERSONAL PUBLISHING/ PARTICIPATORY MEDIA TOOLS

• Blogs – writing

• Podcasts - audio

• Wikis – collaboration (mostly text)

MEDIA

• Video repositories: – YouTube, TeacherTube, Google Video,

BlipTV

• Flickr (photo sharing)

My ‘TAG CLOUD’

folksonomy

from http://del.icio.us/mikecogh

TAGS BRINGPEOPLE TOGETHER

Networked Learning

CONNECTIVISM: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

(George Siemens, University of Manitoba, Canada)Principles of Connectivism:

• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.

• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.

• Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

THE CROWD:

Collective wisdom?

Stupidity of the masses?

Is our culture beingre-written?

Is the Internet killing ourCulture? (Andrew Keen:the cult of the amateur)

Proliferation of Content and Services

• Decline of the gatekeepers of content (the end of copyright?)

• Affects status and position of the expert (‘the professional’)

• The World is Flat (Thomas Friedman)

Rewriting or Killing our Cultures?

Coping with the Proliferation of Content

• Social Bookmarking (Delic.io.us)• RSS feeds and content aggregators

(Bloglines, Netvibes, iTunes, Moodle)• “People just don’t subscribe to magazines

anymore; they also subscribe to people.”• “You don’t have to look for content.

Content finds you.” • Twitter• Friendfeed

Using RSS to aggregate content

• Netvibes, Protopage, Pageflakes

Open Content

Creative Commons Licensing

from Jeffrey Beall at http://www.flickr.com/photos/denverjeffrey/301014978/

A GLOBAL AUDIENCE:

YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8

• Performance by a 13 yr old Korean boy• Jan 31st: 34,770,497 million views; 142796 comments• That’s more than the populations of

Israel 5.7mDenmark 5.3mFinland 5.1mNew Zealand 3.6mIreland 3.6mHolland 16.4mAustralia 20.4m etc

WHAT’S ALL THE FUSS ABOUT?

• Is it real?• Who are these 34.7 million people?• Copyright implications? – I can reuse the content for my own purposes• Who is exercising editorial control?• Disintermediation – the decline of the gatekeepers of content• Should students have access to sites like this?

(see ‘YouTube – a Class Act’)• How do students like this feel at school?• Should we be encouraging our students

1. to create content2. To publish to these kinds of sites

• Empowerment and realisation of identity through personal publishing to social networking sites

MIT; Jason and TV shows…..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5jtiJPlv4Y

Indian YouTube Equivalents

• http://meravideo.com/

• http://apnatube.com/

• http://layfile.com/

• http://www.aapkavideo.com

Indian Initiative: babajob.com/babalife.com

NY Times, Oct 30th, 2007

It’s a Wild World

http://youtube.com/watch?v=T-t8tUED9MI

“Just remember there’s a lot of bad and beware.”

Are we sociologically ready?

What are our ethical responsibilities as educators:

• to our students?• to ourselves? (teacher sacked for posting photo on MySpace)

“I blog therefore I am.”

Weblog search engine Technorati:

• 8,000 -17,000 new blogs created every single day. • a new weblog is created somewhere in the world every 5.8 seconds. • On average, approx 3 blogs are updated every second.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/13/8000_bloggers_per_day/ (13/4/06)

http://flickr.com/photos/dbarefoot/5279903/

From a student of Konrad Glogowski:

“Hello Mr. Glogowski

It’s Phil, just in case you haven’t guessed already. I’d just like to thank you for a great year of blogging, and to wish you luck in the years ahead. You really managed to make a few of us into writers. I think writing/blogging will be something I’ll carry with me my whole life.”(http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/)

THE CULTURAL CONTEXT

• Does teacher know best?

Image courtesy ofhttp://www.sussex.ac.uk/USIS/test/education/1-2-14.html

http://flickr.com/photos/32912387@N00/171506548/

SLOW LEARNING

"It is going to become very fashionable at some point to be disconnected," Silicon Valley futurist Paul Saffo predicts. "There are going to be people who wear their disconnectivity like a badge.“(http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070111/1a_tech-noxx.art.htm)

SLOW LEARNING: A Dangerous but Powerful Idea - Counter Acceleration and

Speed with Slowness and Wholeness

• Geetha Narayanan is Principal Investigator with Project Vision at the Centre for Education Research Training and Development (CERTAD) within the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology in Bangalore, India.

Geetha Narayanan - Slowness as a pedagogy

• consciously embrace the core value of slowness – both as way of being and as a way of learning

• culture of immediacy values fast knowledge which in turn runs counter to the development of both the self and the mind.

• The thoughtless and widespread use of technology as the universal solution to the rising need for fast knowledge is wrong and must be questioned. Often in developing countries, such as India, the term ‘digital divide’ is used to support the argument that the use of new technologies, alone, will create conditions of learning … That is not true

• the new digital technologies are tools that allow for learners to develop their imaginations, to be able to play and to have fun, to be able to tell stories in different and exciting ways. But in order to generate value they need to be integrated into new forms and structures in an invisible and contextual manner - one where new media arts can sustain social change.

• Slowness promotes “wellness of being”

HORIZONTAL V

VERTICAL LEARNING

Horizontal Learning (multitasking)

Instant Messaging

Instant Messaging

Assignment

SMS

iPod

Surfing

Watching video/TV

Vertical Learning (single focus)

Assignment: What were the

principal factors that led

to the Indonesian coup in 1965

and the eventual downfall of

President Sukarno?(5000 words)

Horizontal v Vertical Learning

The discerning eteacher:

• Acknowledges the nature and influence of horizontal learning (multitasking)

• Knows when to encourage vertical learning (single focus activity)

The excellent eteacher:

• has an online presence/website (eg course homepage on LMS, or own website, blog, etc)

• Knows how to use technology for delivery and assessment and therefore has a blog, a wiki, or podcast site

• Includes media in delivery and production of teaching materials and student assessment

• Models and teaches digital literacy – Creates and provides digital resources– Teaches search, validation, and verification skills– Employs and models RSS as a means of aggregating and

distributing content

The excellent eteacher:

• Teaches about, and employs collaborative approaches

• Switches between sage and guide as appropriate

• Knows when to call in the wisdom of the experts to balance the wisdom of the crowd

• Acknowledges the value of informal learning• Accepts that engaging learners is necessary

(and that probably means using technology)

The excellent eteacher:

• Acknowledges that students may assess the value of a resource via their networks rather than accept the word of the expert (teacher/lecturer)

• Uses social bookmarking for collective mining and sharing of resources

• Is a good (and frequent) online communicator• Knows how to effectively combine synchronous and

asynchronous modes of delivery• Is able to teach in a virtual classroom/web conferencing

environment (eg Centra, Elluminate, etc)• Must be e-connected and draw on the resources of their

networks to remain current (and demonstrate to students)

IN CONCLUSION:

Living as a connected educator (Nancy White: ‘eliving’):

• reduces the time you have available to attend to relationships locally

• broadens your sphere of influence • widens your catchment area for

information, knowledge, and collegiality.• involves reconceptualising the way you

learn and the way you teach.

IN CONCLUSION:

Being a connected educator involves: • engaging with the world of participatory media• guiding students in this new disintermediated

world• modelling the use of technology for lifelong

learning• allowing time for ‘slow learning’ and reflection

• It’s all about connections……

Education by and large has not changed. Syllabus/curriculum is still rooted in a past paradigm of fixed knowledge. The world beyond classrooms has changed a great deal, and will continue to do so at an ever-increasing rate……

Photo courtesy of Sawrah, http://flickr.com/photos/sawrah/314474272/

Tools to Trial

• Delicious - http://del.icio.us• Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/• TeacherTube - http://teachertube.com/• Edublogs - http://edublogs.org/• Podzone - http://podzone.tafesa.edu.au/• Slideshare - http://www.slideshare.net• Twitter - http://twitter.com/• Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/• Ning - http://www.ning.com/• Bloglines - http://www.bloglines.com/

Further Resources

• New Technologies Means New Learning • Designing eLearning• Thinking about the ‘M’ in M-learning (Dr Norbert Pachler) (paper to

be part of forthcoming proceedings of mLearn conference, Oct 2007)

• The 8 Competencies of Online Interaction (Nancy White)• Multiliteracies for Collaborative Learning Environments -

http://www.opensource.idv.tw/moodle/course/view.php?id=23 (log in as guest)