Puzzle Makers or Trend Setters
I have this running belief that the best way to garner attention, and maybe even get rich and famous, is to slap a 2.0 next to something you have interest in and run off to market it. Honestly, Health 2.0, Politics 2.0, Life 2.0, Music 2.0, (fill in the blank) 2.0, and Web 2.0 – yes, the 2.0 craze culprit! It really is enough to make a person’s head spin especially educators and educational stakeholders where it seems to be out of control: student 2.0, (subject-matter) 2.0, School 2.0, Teacher 2.0, Administrator 2.0, Classroom 2.0, and Learning 2.0 (and is that 2.O or 2.zero – someone help me out with this).
Puzzle Makers
So, with my head spinning, I’ve been trying to put this whole educational 2.0 puzzle together so that I can find the best way to introduce these to educators, administrators, and parents are in a way that is inviting not discouraging? In other words, how do we focus on the big picture of learning not on the technology or the latest 2.0 terminology?
The key to the puzzle is the ultimate target of education: learning. After all, we should be looking beyond the scope of the tools as defined under web 2.0 and looking to shape pedagogical practices to ensure that the focus is on the learning. In the world of educational technology, this means the concept of Learning 2.0 including the 21st Century Skills.
However, Learning 2.0 will never reach a point of mass acceptance unless administrators are fully supportive and set it as the target. In other words, Learning 2.0 must be embedded into the culture of the school and this takes leadership defined by Adminstrator 2.0. If not, Learning 2.0 will be random at best, strictly an anomaly.
Each teacher has a number of tools and practices at their disposal: web 1.0 box, web 2.0 box, and traditional practices box. While many of these tools and teaching practices can hit the Learning 2.0 target, the box best capable of hitting the target efficiently and effectively on a routine basis is the classroom 2.0 box as it mashes best practices with current technology including web 2.0 to create a transformative learning environment. When this occurs, the teacher is no longer using web 2.0 for technology sake. They have transformed their teaching (teacher 2.0) and have fostered a learning environment (classroom 2.0) that is best able to reach this generation of students (student 2.0) and the Learning 2.0 target.
Hmm... but what about all the puzzle pieces for Biology 2.0, English 2.0, Math 2.0 and those odd pieces that have 3.0 attached?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the point here and it is not about putting the the puzzle together but admiring all of its pieces. Maybe we only need to focus on Web 2.0. However, if it was just as simple as starting a blog, using a wiki, playing video games, and getting students on the web every day to use an assortment of new and great web 2.0 tools, wouldn’t we be doing it?
Trend Setters
I guess we could really be trend setters and stop using 2.0 all together and just focus on what we want students to learn, how will we know they learned it, and what will we do if they don't. After all, the ultimate goal, the big target, is quite simply learning not what concept we can slap next to 2.0 but then what fun would that be for us? ☺
Comments
Great post. I agree that there is a more-than-trivial danger in applying a versioning scheme to learning and educational practice.
This is going to quickly get out of hand with everyone uping the ante, supposedly indicating that have superior, latest-greatest learning teaching and learning going on.
You think it's a puzzle now, just wait till some institutions/technologists start hawking and presenting at conferences on their new Learning 5.0 wares and methods!
I'm with you on the trend setting--let's stop using it if we can help ourselves. I find myself waaay too often invoking (and furthering) the silly title of an otherwise important and meaningful phenomenon. I just don't think it is possible to stop here at 2.0, and am concerned about already having seen "Learning 2.5".
-Joel Galbraith
Posted by: Joel Galbraith | October 22, 2007 6:25 AM
Whenever I enter into the discussion of Web2.0, Learning2.0, Classroom2.0, I always get the image of Neo in The Matrix being given the choice of the red pill, or the blue pill. The audience knows which pill Neo is going to take, he’s the Chosen One.
Which is my point when it comes to learning2.0. You can introduce Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, UStream into the curriculum, but we are still teaching the same curriculum.
What we teach needs to make the shift, the change. The learning outcomes must make sense in the 21st century. Technology is there to make our lives easier. So why then do we waste so much time trying to get our students to rote memorize the 50 states, and their capitals when we could just have them Google it?
No matter how you want to wrap the tools of Web2.0 up and use them in your classroom, you are still teaching an outdated curriculum that lost most of its relevance when I was in high school 13 years ago. Education is still stuck in Beta testing in this country and until we move past the dig a mile wide and a inch deep version, all we are doing with Wikis, Blogs, and Podcasts is offering our students the choice of swallowing the same pill, just with a different color.
Posted by: Evan Scherr | October 22, 2007 2:17 PM