Wanderings…

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.

I am very excited! One of our innovative and forward thinking teachers here at Gananda has started a new blog. He started it in collaboration with a MLIS student from Buffalo. Here are some of his thoughts about his new blog …..

A View to the World

I’ve created a category called English 12 Pop Topics, and I’d like to get my class involved in discussing some issues of debate/importance in the news. I’d miss a great teaching point with them right before they become citizens if I did not expose them to a forum on issues (ex. Imus). We can contain ourselves in (room) 110 and talk about it, but I’d much rather have them share a viewpoint with the world.

To use an phrase from my oh-so-distant youth – Right On!!

Librarian’s Lament has generated a few comments here – and many on LM_NET. I need to work these responses into a new post. Someday when there is time… I need to retire or take a sabbatical.

Anyway – just wanted to add some fuel to the fire. If you have not seen the video EPIC 2014 – you should take the time to watch it. Here is the filter friendly version in case your filter blocks the first link as mine does.

This video will make you think about what might happen if people lose their ability to think critically. Yes – there is a lot of wonderful thinking and discussion going on in this new world of the Read/Write Web. But there are dangers…. Our students need the skills to navigate this new world of information. I am thinking about it every day. Banning Web 2.0 sites and banning Google is NOT the answer. I suspect that changing databases & library catalogs to be more user-friendly is part of the solution. As school librarians, creating meaningful and memorable lessons on how to use & evaluate all kinds of information (google-based or otherwise)definitely IS the answer. Now – if I can just get some thinking/planning time!!

Hmmmm…. A lot to think about here. A lot of my reservations about “folksonomies” AKA “the hive mind” leap out at me from this article. I am too tired tonight to think coherently – but here it is for future reference:

DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism

Hmmmmm…….

I am doing some research for our exciting new 10th grade research project about globalization/flat world concepts. (See “Researching the Future”)

I expected to find a lot in our databases about WEB 2.0 and schools, but so far I am turning up very little. Additional search strategies might help – but still….. The results I have found so far are very interesting (and disappointing). It seems as if the issue of WEB 2.0 and schools is barely on the radar in either the popular or the academic press. And yet I feel that these technologies will be crucial to success in our ever-changing world. MySpace is the only WEB 2.0 phenom that appears to be of interest. Too bad…… Obviously we will be using Google et al to locate information and I am sure we will be more successful there.

Here are my results: