Saturday, January 26, 2008

Web 2.0 as the handmaiden of Education?

Chris Riedel reports on Chris Dede's, (Timothy E. Wirth professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard's Graduate School of Education) talk at the FETC 2008*. In particular, Riedel notes that:
"This evolution (of education) has created a gap between what (Dede) termed 'Classic learning and knowing' and 'Web 2.0 learning and knowing.' According to Dede, many students feel that what they learn is irrelevant to their 21st-century lives. They also feel that they have powerful ways of learning within their lives that are not respected in the classroom. 'Thinking is now distributed,' he said, 'across minds, tools and media, groups of people, and space and time.' It is important, he shared, for people to be fluent in new technologies and literacies because more and more jobs are disappearing that require classical knowledge. "
More here.

Perhaps it's just me but the resonance of the message is welcome news.

*Florida Educational Technology Conference

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