The Why 2 of Web 2.0: How it transforms everything! 9 May 08

My notes and thoughts from the The Why 2 of Web 2.0: How it transforms everything!

Will Richardson – A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything

Information from Will’s presentation is available at his wikispace: http://willrichardson.wikispaces.com

Web 2.0 allow anyone to be the ‘teacher’. E-Tools like U-Stream TV offers an avenue to share knowledge globally.

Read/Write Web – Obama 08 website is web 2.0 – Will has been writing a ‘blog’ about the political issues he is passionate about with other Obama supports. Powerful political opportunities.

NineInchNails have released their latest music for free from their website. Anyone can access this music for free. The music industry needs to realise that the Read/Write web has changed its industry and look at new business models.

Online social networks, reviews and ranking allow conversation around products. This means businesses need to be more ‘transparent’ as people start to write and review their products online.

Collaboration is becoming more effective than competition in business. This model is so important in education – educators need to share what they know and what they produce with their colleagues to build and develop more.

A wireless ‘cloud’ over American cities which allows wireless internet access to everyone in that city.

Clay Shirky’s Book – Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organisation – “about what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures”.

Teaching young people how to develop their online identity is so important. What are schools doing to prepare young people to develop their online identity. We can’t stop young people using online social networking but we need to ‘guide’ them. Young people need to have access to ‘fire’ – but in a safe, guided environment.

Clarence Fisher – Remote Access – is a great edublogger to follow. He has his students read a blog about an African village - Natavillage Blog – and then read and respond to this blog. People from Nata Village start to comment on his students’ blogs – a global learning circle is created.

Learning is changing. Knowledge is changing. Information is changing.

Do we need to ‘memorise’ everything? Because we are more focused on what will be on the ‘standardised’ testing. We are still assuming that information is ‘scarce’. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has all of it content, exams, exam answers etc totally open.

Wikipedia allows the ‘community’ to write the history of the world, collaboratively, and by not the influential/powerful people.

Student needed to do an ‘assignment’ that he didn’t want to do – so he posts a poor start on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia community then ‘writes’ the better version of the topic. Student then hands up as his own work.

The skills of collaboration and cooperative learning will be inherit skills of the future.

When/Where will we be showing people how to access information from digital devices (computers, mobile devices) which have internet connectivity? This is where the ‘testing’ should revolve around. Can you find the capital city of … on your mobile device?

Scratch - Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.

Yugma - an easy-to-use, affordable web collaboration service that works on Windows, Mac and Linux

Flat Classroom – Vicki Davis – read “The World is Flat” and wanted her students to write about it. Vicki linked her students to students in Bagladesh. This allowed Vicki to create ‘thin walls’ – opening her students to the world. However, we create ‘thick walled’ classrooms through our ‘firewalls’.

Radio Willow Web - is a podcast for kids and by kids from the students at Willowdale Elementary School in Omaha, Nebraska. Each new show is called a Willowcast. Each Willowcast can be heard on WillowWeb as an mp3 digital audio file. – these students value the knowledge that learn and create because they have a wider audience than their teacher.

Our educators need to change themselves so they prepare their students for the world in the 21^st Century. It is important not to replicate what we do now in education. We need to change the pedagogy of our teaching. The power is in the networks which we can develop in the online environment.

Jing - The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

The more experience people have online the more experienced they are to suss out and handle online predators. Learning how to be ‘safe’ online is not just a unit of work that they should be electing to do. It should be embedded into all of their learning.

Westley Field – Director of the Skoolaborate Initiative and Director of Online Learning and Manager of IT, MLC Sydney

Virtual Worlds – Horizon Report reports that Virtual Worlds will be being used in education in 2-3 years time. Where are we at to bring Virtual Worlds in our educational institute?

Kinset - is for those of us who like to shop. Stroll down an aisle with hundreds of items on display. Pause when something catches your eye. Browse and linger while discovering new things.

Skoolaborate – is a collaboration of 15 schools from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, which has created an online virtual world for schools to collaborate and share ideas and experiences around education.

Students are mentoring each other to develop the skills they require to function in this online virtual environment. The students are the teacher in this environment.

Potential Projects:
Social Actions – Machinima – A Child’s War – very powerful machinima about child soldiers in Uganda – Global Kids’ Digital Media Initiative; Community Service – fundraising, music; Enterprise – The Mall; Design Challenge

The skills that the students are developing in this Virtual World is being transferred into the real world ie self-confidence

“I’m Westley, I’m 48, and I can fly – please listen to Will – and allow your students to fly”

Judy O’Connell – Head, Library and Information Services, St Joseph’s College

Learning to change – Changing to Learn – recommended video

Are you a Master Teacher or a Mentor Teacher?

We need to encourage and support the use of technology with our students so they understand how to effectively operate in an online environment – and not ‘bunge-stream’ themselves inappropriately, for the world to see, forever ….

Learn how to be ‘synchronous and asynchronous’ online – develop an online identity – develop a ‘personal learning cloud’ of e-tools which you can not live without. Start by reading blogs, then writing blogs, then getting your students to blog. Create your own online existence.

Don’t transfer the face to face skills to an online environment – transform the learning experience which enhances the online environment – collaboration, empower … ‘A thousand minds are better than one’.

We need a ‘new angle’ to our teaching and learning

Combine the Ross Todd leadership and philosophy with the Will Richardson leadership and philosophy to transform School Libraries into dynamic agents of learning – Library 2.0.

Pandia Search Central - An excellent educational search engine

PowerPoint is the digital equivalent of Will’s Friday folder – designed specifically to enable a teacher to ‘tick a box’.

Christine Mackenzie – Chief Executive, Yarra Plenty Regional Library, Melbourne

http://www.yprl.vic.gov.au/

“Informed connected inclusive community”

Web 2.0 is not so much about the technology but about how we interact with the technology with the ability to create.

Sherman Young – The Book is Dead – nobody is reading books on buses – they’re more interested in their mobile devices – texting, talking, listening

Michael Wesch - "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us." – Learn to Learn; Adapt to Change; Scan the Horizon –

The unconference – who ever comes is the right people, when it starts it starts, when it ends it ends - An unconference is a facilitated participant-driven face-to-face conference around a theme or purpose.

If Web 2.0 Transforms Everything, Where Do I Start? Panel: Will Richardson, Christine Mackenzie, Westley Field, Judy O’Connell

If you don’t leave your planning to the last minute, you can request to have some sites ‘released’.

Lobby your Ministers. Parents are powerful lobbyists. Educate your parents, or in the VET sector – educate your clients/students – and get them to lobby the Government.

You find the ‘gems’ via your networks. Find one really good reliable blogger and tap into their network.

Think.com - a safe social networking site for primary school students

A photo of most of the Twitterers from my Twitter Network thanks to Michael Coghlan (from left to right) Tony, Chris, Michael, Jude & Me