The webby world and life 2.0

This is what I get for going to tech-camp in July, dear Reader. My own web-log and a blogger address. Actually, sarcasm aside, the Building Learning Communities conference sponsored by the Alan November Group [www.novemberlearning.com] was extraordinary.

Three days of mind-blogging workshop sessions on the emerging technologies. I’ve never been to a conference where the adults, mostly teachers and administrators, were falling over themselves to get into the front row – or at least close to the power strips for their laptops (For the record I was armed with a yellow legal pad circa 1972 as were thankfully a few others –naturally we clustered together at coffee break).

Web 2.0 – School 2.0 and Life 2.0 – refers to the 2nd generation of the internet. The old internet (1990s) was a read only technology. The new web – generation 2.0 – is a read/write web. An interactive technology that our students (world-wide) have already mastered and we need to understand as quickly as possible. Marc Prensky is credited with the terms digital natives (yup – the students) and digital immigrants (right again – us adults). Marc: “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach”.

Part of the reason for this blog is to force myself to engage in the interactive web. Welcome to the webby world, John.

Here's a good read : WIKINOMICS by Don Tapscott. This book takes Thomas Friedman's bestseller The World is Flat one step further and explains how companies world-wide are using new technologies to solve problems/create products through mass collaboration 24/7 -as they say- anywhere around the globe. Even a non-techie like me can understand Tapscott's thesis.