Web 2.0’s impact on education and innovation
June 6, 2006
Picture credit: Ken Yarmosh
Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning?, an article that appears in the EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 2 (March/April 2006) by Bryan Alexander, is a fascinating look into the ways through which new developments in the way information is displayed, accessed and created on the web is influencing classroom practices:
Web 2.0’s lowered barrier to entry may influence a variety of cultural forms with powerful implications for education, from storytelling to classroom teaching to individual learning. It is much simpler to set up a del.icio.us tag for a topic one wants to pursue or to spin off a blog or blog departmental topic than it is to physically meet co-learners and experts in a classroom or even to track down a professor. Starting a wiki-level text entry is far easier than beginning an article or book. What new, natively digital textual forms are impending as small-scale production scales up? “Web 1.0” has already demonstrated immense powers for connecting learners, teachers, and materials. How much more broadly will this connective matrix grow under the impact of the openness, ease of entry, and social nature of Web 2.0? How can higher education respond, when it offers a complex, contradictory mix of openness and restriction, public engagement and cloistering? How do we respond to the possibilities of what some call “E-learning 2.0,” based on environments, microcontent, and networking?
Amongst a recent flurry of articles that look at the impact of Web 2.0 on business, such as A VC’s View of Web 2.0 and Web 2.0 Has Corporate America Spinning, it’s refreshing to see an article that talks about the potential of new technologies for education – a vital foundation of any mercantile infrastructure anywhere in the world. To undervalue the importance of technology investments necessary in creating the syllabi necessary to train knowledge workers to nourish the global veins of commerce and industry is self-defeating, as it is sound education that ultimately supports good business.
In a recent post, I also examined what Web 2.0 would mean for Online Dispute Resolution – flagging the need, in particular, to use new technologies to expand ODR access to those who are physically challenged.
We need to look seriously at the ways we can use Web 2.0 not just as a corporate / commercial tool, but as a revolution of web technologies that allow more people to gain access, contribute and disseminate information on the internet.
There is however another side to Web 2.0.
To wiki or not to wiki
Wikis, seen as part of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, have attracted a lot of attention as a way through which users can collectively build upon the knowledge of others, the most famous example of which is Wikipedia. Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning? points to Wikis:
After e-mail lists, discussion forums, groupware, documents edited and exchanged between individuals, and blogs, perhaps the writing application most thoroughly grounded in social interaction is the wiki. Wiki pages allow users to quickly edit their content from within the browser window.11 They originally hit the Web in the late 1990s (another sign that Web 2.0 is emergent and historical, not a brand-new thing). Wikis have recently become popular in many venues, including business. The most visible wiki project is Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), which allows users to edit each encyclopedia entry, thereby creating an open editing and review structure. There are many wiki applications that users can install and run from their own machines. Hosting services have recently grown: Socialtext (http://www.socialtext.com/) is one of the standouts. Users can set up accounts, then write and revise their collaborative work. Socialtext, along with some earlier wiki implementations, like TWiki (http://www.twiki.org/), supports blocking access to selected pages except by passwords, narrowing the pool of potential collaborators.
However, not all stand convinced. For instance, Lies, Damned Lies, and the Internet states:
There is nothing about the collective mind of online communities and wikis that must lead to wisdom. Yes, crowds can be wise. Crowds can also burn witches, cause financial panics, and elect George W. Bush president.
Furthermore, Nicholas Carr in Now Let’s Bury the Myth states:
As I’ve said in the past, Wikipedia is an amazing achievement, with considerable strengths and considerable weaknesses. But it has become wrapped in a cloak of myth that many people, for whatever reason, seem intent on perpetuating. Wikipedia is not an egalitarian collective. It is not an example of mob rule. It is not an expression of collective intelligence. It is not an emergent system.
These are strong points and one’s, especially when one reads the full article along with the very interesting comments in reaction to it, that can’t be easily dismissed..
As a response to the above in the wider debate on the true usefulness of Web 2.0, I can only repeat myself:
Web 2.0 is about a social revolution in the way information can be created, distributed and consumed. It is about disruptive technologies, that can be scaled up on-demand, with geo-political footprints much larger than those at present. It’s about a whole new generation of web savvy individuals demanding services on mobile devices, their primary mode of internet access, that mirror those now found only on PC’s.
More than the monicker’s of Web 2.0 and now, Law 2.0, I’m interested in how new technologies & ODR will help those mired in disputes and conflict help vision ways to bring about order and peace in their lives, whether such conflict is in the real world, virtual worlds or both.
Update: An interesting Slashdot discussion on the article here.
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