Web 2.0 In Education

1. Our target student group, K12, are involved intensively and extensively online through social networking sites such as myspace, facebook, youtube, etc.. This is "where the kids are", and this phenomenon merits exploration as an adjunct to educational activities which would be in part, socially driven.

2. The web has made a major transformation in the past several years to a world where the content is created by millions of users, as opposed to companies, government, schools, and so on. "Web 2.0" is characterized by wikis, like wikipedia, blogs, photo sharing like flickr, video sharing like youtube, and so on. The notion of user-created content has motivational factors which need to be better understood.

3. Universities are already on board with social networking and virtual worlds. (Even U. of A. !!). They have set up dedicated channels on iTunes for audio and video podcasting of course material (and marketing), channels on youtube for video presentations and student responses, and an emerging use of cell phones which are evolving into video devices.

4. About 200 schools and universities have a presence in Second Life and Teen Second Life, virtual 3D worlds where students and faculty can interact via their "avatars" in real time. (There are many other virtual worlds operated by entities as diverse as MTV, PBS, General Mills, etc.). These virtual spaces are being explored because of their potential to provide platforms for innovative approaches to teaching because they are not constrained to the "real world".

So, in general, it's about the value of new technology for education in a world, which for better or worse, is increasingly technological. As new technologies have emerged over the years there always has been a flutter of interest in their applications in education. Here goes another round.