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George Seimens explains, "Knowledge is distributed. Learning is the process of creating networks. This is increasingly aided by technology." George posed a question this week, "If a network structure is a foundation of learning, are our education systems designed to appropriately take advantage of networking opportunities?"

Diane Rehm Radio Show/Podcast on Social Networking Written by David Carpenter on May 13, 2008 – 4:52 pm U.S. radio host Diane Rehm interviews several guests including Gina Bianchini, co-founder of Ning, about what is happening in social networking. They offer an understandable explanation for folks new to social networking while expanding the conversation noting the power of connectivity for businesses and non-profits. Listen to the show at Diane’s site.

I can say without hesitation that all my traditional educational experiences combined, everything from grade school to grad school, have not taught me as much about learning and being a learner as blogging has. My ability to easily consume other people's ideas, share my own in return, and communicate with other educators around the world has led me to dozens of smart, passionate teachers from whom I learn every day. It's also led me to technologies and techniques that leverage this newfound network in ways that look nothing like what's happening in traditional classrooms.

In many schools and even states, it's been, rather, a movement to block and bust: no blogs, no cell phones, no IM. We take away the powerful social technologies our kids are already using to learn and, in doing so, tell them their own tools are irrelevant. Or, instead of using the complex and challenging phenomenon of a site such as Wikipedia to teach the realities of navigating information in this new world, we prohibit its use. In fact, at this writing, the U.S. legislature is in the process of deciding whether schools and libraries should have access to any of the potential of the Read/Write Web at all. When you read this, blogs and wikis and podcasts (and much more) may be things that students (and teachers) can access and create only from off-campus.

I wonder whether, twenty-five or fifty years from now, when four or five billion people are connecting online, the real story of these times won't be the more global tests and transformations these technologies offered. How, as educators and learners, did we respond? Did we embrace the potentials of a connected, collaborative world and put our creative imaginations to work to reenvision our classrooms? Did we use these new tools to develop passionate, fearless, lifelong learners? Did we ourselves become those learners?