One of our teachers shared this post with me: Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education http://www.stevehargadon.com/2008/03/web-20-is-future-of-education.html I have always been interested in Web 2.0 and I “get” the relevance and importance of web 2.0 to education – at least I THOUGHT I did. But this post made me realize that web 2.0 is not simply a collection of tools and it is not a passing fad. It is the new way that we will operate in a “flat world.”  Education can’t ignore this.

I was particularly struck by this part of the post, with it’s implications for educators in general and librarians in particular:

Help Build the New Playbook. You may think that you don’t have anything to teach the generation of students who seem so tech-savvy, but they really, really need you. For centuries we have had to teach students how to seek out information – now we have to teach them how to sort from an overabundance of information. We’ve spent the last ten years teaching students how to protect themselves from inappropriate content – now we have to teach them to create appropriate content.  They may be “digital natives,” but their knowledge is surface level, and they desperately need training in real thinking skills. More than any other generation, they live lives that are largely separated from the adults around them, talking and texting on cell phones, and connecting online. We may be afraid to enter that world, but enter it we must, for they often swim in uncharted waters without the benefit of adult guidance. To do so we may need to change our conceptions of teaching, and better now than later.

We hope our upcoming Academic Challenge Event will help pull our school into the 21st century.  I am sure that unblocking Web 2.0 tools will be at least one of the issues students will focus on as they study and make recommendations about how to design school for the future.