Thing # 5.

The first article I read was Minds on Fire: "Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0." The things that stand out most clearly in this article were the discussion between the Cartesian view of learning and the social view of learning. As the article stated, Cartesian learning assumes knowledge is a substance that is passed from teacher to student. Social learning is the idea that the content is socially constructed through conversations about the subject and interactions with others. Also discussed in this article was the shift in mindset, from learning about to learning to be. In my own experience in school, I found the perfect example. I took 6 years of French, studied it in middle school and high school. I could read it fairly well, take tests well, but when it came to holding an actual conversation I was awful. It wasn't until I went to France (learning to be), that my French conversation skills improved! This is just one example of many that I could think of that would benefit from shifting from "learning about" to "learning to be." As the article discussed, learning about needs to take place as the same time as learning to be! If the students are taught this, it will encourage them to be life long learners throughout their careers!


I found this article extremely interesting because I was having a similar conversation with an old teacher at work. As I was telling her about the web 2.0 and learning 2.0, she was concerned with students missing out on learning to think for themselves and missing the "basics" of school-reading, writing, and math. I thought it was funny that the teacher and I could have two completely differing views on how to teach. The older generation of teachers, clearly do not believe incorporating this type of learning into their classrooms because it takes away from the "basics." The farther I read in this article, it began to mention about how diverse the job market is becoming and how we are teaching students for jobs that possibly don't even exist yet! In my mind with the internet being so widely used, we would be doing children a disservice by not having them learn to interact via the internet.

The other article I read was "New Literacies: Enrichment or Essential?" by David Jakes. This article was a bit odd. It posed more questions, rather than presenting information. Once I had time to process and think about his three examples of how technology could be used in schools, I found it fairly interesting. As we have discussed in class, students become excited to learn and use computers in school. I think that if more teachers incorporated them in their classrooms students would be more eager to learn. By allowing the students to publish their work online, it gives them a voice. Having a blog, creating a video from a short story, and working together in a group project that is published allows each student to express their individuality. However, most importantly if this content is online, it allows others to read and discover the author’s voice as well! I think it means more to people when their work is published online, rather than just knowing the professor will be the only one reading it!

School 2.0 is the future of education. It will incorporate the internet, working together online with other students, free and open software programs, etc. With the internet becoming ever so popular, it only makes sense that the students of the next generation know how to use and collaborate with people online. As I discussed earlier, some teachers are concerned that this new form of teaching will leave out and miss something that the older style of teaching taught. However, I believe that this is the best possible thing for students. It will allow them to expand their view points and see that there is more out in the world than just their classroom and books. If web 2.0 and school 2.0 have already come this far in the past two years, I can't imagine where the education system will be in 10 years if these new learning techniques are adopted. Student will be more willing to learn if they see the content being used in their community around them! Growing up learning in a school 2.0 atmosphere will hopefully teach them to be life long learners and always have a thirst to gain more knowledge!