Friday, July 07, 2006

Will Richardson: The Read/Write web

Did you know that Will Richardson has 2,824 bloglines subscribers of which 884 have 'gone public'?? OK, I am not going to start comparing blogs and subscriber numbers but......this is a lot!

OK, I am probably the only person at Will's session this afternoon who has not read 'Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts' but, in my defense, the reason is geographic. I live in Bangladesh, my school will not let me use the official postal address (in the UK) to order books and using DHL or Bangladesh post causes all sorts of stress with customs etc etc...but, my very own copy as pre-ordered a month ago is with a friend in Huntington Beach ready for me to peruse and devour as of tomorrow night! Thank goodness for our new online world so that I can keep up in the world without having to wait for hard copy!!

Back to more important issues........moblogging

Will has called his presentation this afternoon:
"A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything"
See his wiki for online information

This is a changed world: Not about technology! It is easy for us to do this.
It is more about imagination [yes!]

One red paperclip........July 12, 2005 story. Aiming to own a house through trading a red paperclip....
mashup: putting together different forms of media together to create a new product (new and interesting) (Annie May music videos)

1 billion people connected to the web, 10 billion pages, 1 trillion links, 50+ million blogs, 70,000 new blogs each day, 2.7 billion links in Technorati

Emerging reality is the Read/Write web "Web 2.0"
Changing the way we communicate and connect with ideas. Linking ideas e.g. Flickr.com
The power of publishing a conversation, age of engagement, era of collboration.

We (bloggers and contributors to the online world are called 'Uploaders' from Friedman in "The World is Flat"

For educators:
  • 69,000 education blogs (Joanne Jacobs)
  • 25+ million kids putting content online (New York Times)
  • Matthew Bischoff 13 year old from New Jersey podcasting from his bedroom
  • Tess's top weather recipes (Will's daughter) on Flickr
  • Sandaig Primary School (Scotland) school web page created by kids
  • Calculus blog [who said you couldn't use a blog in a mathematics class!!]
Students are building networks and going far beyond the classroom walls

It's about imagination.......
"How can our learning be enhanced as professionals and augmented by these tools...thinking literally out of the box of the traditional classroom"
MIT Opencourseware offers great online courses with questions, answers, notes, podcasts etc all online

From 'do your own work' to 'work with others' change in classrooms. How do you monitor plagiarism??
Wikipedia is an amazing phenomena, daily traffic greater than for nytimes.com

The web changes texts, e.g. South African curriculum is on a wiki hosted by wiki books
There is an opportunity to create our own texts, "Rip, mix and Learn"

The web changes teaching: Teacher as Connector
e.g. The Secret Life of Bees class blog and interaction with author Sue Monk
Teacher as "DJ": e.g. playlist

The web changes learning: Will has learned more as a blogger than any other educational experience (sharing use of technology and understanding of kids)

Learn anything, anywhere, anytime
"Ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate"
Learner decides what, where, when and how she learns
From just in case learning to just in time learning
"Nomadic learning": site to site as you need it. Learning networks based on meaning rather than proximity

Community of learners, e.g. 43 things
Social network sites on wikipedia e.g. MySpace has 90 million sites
Digg, del.icio.us,

Audience: Hand in your homework to Publish it

Bering Strait School District Student Broadcasting Team (Alaska)
Bud the Teacher

How do you read a blog entry with hyperlinks? Are we teaching this?

Literacy is editing e.g. Martin Luther King website
Literacy equals knowing how to find out who created the site

Literacy of networks; This is not a linear world anymore....

The web changes computing:
Web as App!
See jumpcut for video editing online

We need to rethink our curriculum...what needs to change when our students can publich to latger audiences...how does a teacher's role change...how do we define literacy in the world???

Challenges
  • Fear: (MySpace adds 280,000 accounts every day) teachers should have MySpace accounts. Is DOPA the answer to our fear??
Al Gore: "Change is inconvenient"
The inconvenient truth about education: decreasing interest in school statistically
School 2.0....?? US Government?
We are on the verge of becoming irrelevant to student's experience

So.....Be imaginative...What is your paperclip? What will you trade up and leverage to develop a more interesting and enhanced learning environment...do it sooner rather than later!

Thanks Will!

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