Dominguez - Distance-educator article summary

The Evolution of Education: Empowering Learners To Think, Create, Share, and Do
By Chris Riedel 01/30/09

http://thejournal.com/Articles/2009/01/30/The-Evolution-of-Education-Emp...

While this article is not directly referring to LMS's, I feel that web 2.0 technology, the use of the internet as an application platform, is leading us into the future of computing, socializing and of course learning and collaboration. Web 2.0 is a central component to the future of distance ed and education in general as illustrated by the the fact that moodlerooms has integrated Google web tools (Google Apps) into its platform.

Chris Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard University cites wikipedia to define web 2.0 as "collaboration, creativity, and sharing between users." He also offers, "These (web 2.0) technologies are doing three very important things at once:
- They are causing a shift in the kinds of knowledge and skills the world values;
- Driving the development of new methods of teaching and learning; and
- Changing the basic characteristics of learners of every age."

As I enter the 6th week of my first foray into k-12 education it is apparent that what happens in that environment, technology and communication wise, does not mirror what happens outside that environment. This brings up some tough questions; How are the youth, our future leaders, going to compete globally while they struggle to play catch up due to our education system failing to bring them up to speed to modern communication and collaboration?

As collaboration on the internet increases there is danger of it becoming less useful for education and more useful for advertising and marketing. The power of these technologies creates some unique complications; privacy issues, copy and intellectual property rights, as well as simple information overload. Essentially the next generation of leaders, teachers and administrators need to be able to stay up to date with and effectively use these tools in order to bring real, lasting change to what has become an archaic educational system. Kids are already using these tools and some, believe it or not, are very skilled in doing so and at increasingly younger ages. This is scary to some, empowering to others.

Professor Dede, points to technologies (wikis, blogs, podcasts, forums, etc) as encouraging and stimulating sharing and creativity. This is where the educational value lies; in the ability to think together with and through technology. Other tools can be used to manipulate and 'repurpose' digital content (mashups, embeds, etc) and communicate in novel ways. Regarding collaboration, I love the notion that the value of these technologies rises as the community using them grows. With social networking the main challenge is maintaining focused, goal oriented interaction. Something not really found on myspace or twitter.