I’ve often wondered what the buzz is with Web2.0 and learning. It’s not like it’s something so new as to be worthy of some of the overly hyped notions of what we do. Sure, Web2.0 signalled a shift to a read/write platform from the read-only web, but we had interactivity before that and we just have more now and a reduction in navigation (clicks). Less navigation can only be good for learning as it gets you to the necessary information quickly with less likelihood of wandering off to something else or forgetting what you were looking for[1].
Take the latest ‘upgrade’ to Blackboard[2]. I keep hearing our Educational Designers spouting off about how Blackboard is now Web2.0. As I have just started using a pilot implementation of it, I’m already thinking that it’s not that big of a change. Sure, the new ‘Grade Center’ is an improvement and it seems a bit more interactive. It does take a little longer to load, but you get all the students in one screen rather than 25 to a screen – a significant improvement when you have classes around the 300 mark. I’ll hold off on judgement about that, till later in the semester.
Our content collection seems a little better and it does have ‘permanent URLs’ which seem more usable, if you can take the time to navigate to them, particularly if you want to link the content collection into the folder structure (not a thing that the designers contemplated, apparently). When that is simplified, I think I’ll be almost convinced.
So parts of the ‘new’ system are more interactive, others seem to be stuck in the read-only web. What I would really like to see in a ‘learning management system’ is a single screen for seeing everything and being able to change permissions, availability etc in a single space. But even with the ‘upgrade’, I still have to modify individual pieces of content which seems to be only minimally interactive and hardly ‘web2.0′.
This may be a part of what leads people to the EduPunk or Meddler stance – the need for an encompassing view rather than a piecemeal view, of seeing the environment rather than the building blocks[3]. There has been a lot of development in interactivity for learning, but the organisation of that interactivity still seems very separate from organising the content. Perhaps that’s one reason why wikis are becoming popular.
- This is why I stopped using (b)Lotus, it always took so long to find things, that I often forgot what I was doing or got sidetracked trying to get it to do what I wanted, but I digress. [↩]
- apparently to version 8 but, in reality only a minor update – 7.3 – 7.4 but renumbered due to ‘business’ reasons [↩]
- forest as well as trees? [↩]
Tags:
EduPunk, flexible learning, technology