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It’s now become so incredibly complex and enmeshed, that each of us now has access to EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE PLANET in less than 6 steps. Even with billions of people on the planet, we can reach literally anyone in 6 steps. That means we can access anyone’s resources in 6 steps. Their skills, their knowledge, their capital, their influence. Any resource.

ANET in less than 6 steps. Even with billions of people on the planet, we can reach literally anyone in 6 steps. That means we can access anyone’s resources in 6 steps. Their skills, their knowledge, their capital, their influence. Any resource.

e’ve transitioned past the point of scarcity.

I had my students this fall engage in social bookmarking, earning credit toward their class participation grade for doing so. I made sure to spend at least 10 minutes a week having students share their finds during class time, which means that the students’ finds were integrated with other class discussions and not just some out-of-class “busy work.”

I’ve set up a Diigo group for the course. I’ll invite my students to create Diigo accounts and join the group. In deference to FERPA, I’ll let students choose pseudonyms if they wish, as long as they let me know.

Diigo groups allow group members to comment on and “like” bookmarks shared with the group. These are features that Delicious doesn’t provide, and I’m eager to test them out with students. We live in a participatory culture, and our students expect to be able to interact with content they consume. “Liking” and commenting are interaction tools that my students should be comfortable using given their experiences on Facebook, and these tools should tap into students’ desires for community and sharing quite nicely.

One final comment, a funny one.  On Monday, in my "Twenty-First Century Literacies" class where laptops are required for a whole range of experiments and inclass collaborative work, I caught one of my students with his laptop open and with a book propped secretly inside it, reading away in his book when he should have been paying attention.   So maybe that's the next class, "Should Professors Allow Students to Use BOOKS in the Classroom Devised for Computer Learning?"   I'm being facetious but that's the point.  A book is a technology too.   How and when we use any technology and for what purpose are the questions we all need to ask.

Do you see the difference?   "Computer learning" doesn't exist.   In 2011, it exists less than it did a decade ago and, in a few years, that phrase won't exist at all.   Students learn.  Computers are tools for all kinds of things, from checking the Facebook page, to making notetaking easier, to being fact checking or calculating devices that can take a class to a more sophisticated level to interactive social networking devices that can either distract a class or allow for new forms of group collaboration.   There are many other uses as well.   The point is that most profs have (a) simply "adapted" (as a colleague told me recently) to computers without understanding the intellectual and pedagogical changes they can enable; or (b) resigned themselves to their present, gleefully or resentflly; or (c) made them into a pedagogical tool; or (d) all of the above.    

Critics counter that, absent clear proof, schools are being motivated by a blind faith in technology and an overemphasis on digital skills — like using PowerPoint and multimedia tools — at the expense of math, reading and writing fundamentals. They say the technology advocates have it backward when they press to upgrade first and ask questions later.

district was innovating

how the district was innovating.

If you haven’t heard about Google Wave, prepare to be blown away. I made the mistake of starting this movie at 10:30 last night thinking I’d probably just watch a few minutes and drift off to sleep.

Google Wave is 100% open-source, so rest assured that developers are ravenously developing extensions, plug-ins, modules, and anything else necessary to make it work on all the platforms we use today.