Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Maximize the Surface Area Where Serendipity Can Happen - Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco

Of course there were no sessions dedicated to the connected/collaborative classroom at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week, but a number of the keynote speakers had inspirational messages that could easily be applied to the use and application of Web 2.0 technology in higher education learning.   

One key point was the switch to thinking about Web 2.0 technologies as technologies that are driven by and evolve based on people and how they use these technologies.  Most of the big advances that have happened in the New Media space have happened because people have invented new ways to use existing technologies in new and interesting ways (ways that the developers of these technologies never dreamt of) to maximize the surface area where serendipity can happen. 

In the higher education space it seems like we could learn a lot from our own students...how do they currently use social media to consume/interact with content?  Also, how do we move away from the "all or nothing" philosophy?  What is we were to allow students to interact with content in multiple mediums?  There is a time and place for video, microblogging, podcasts, as well as regular, face-to-face interactive lectures...how do we learn as educators how to choose the right medium for the content we are teaching?  And how do we accommodate the different types of learners in our classroom by providing content in multiply mediums.
Interesting Keynotes from Web 2.0 Web Expo to check out -

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