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This quote struck me on many levels. Specifically, the notion of being distracted in the "other features" seemed to be a loaded statement. Do students consider exploring outside the realm of what is defined as "learning" as a distraction? Isn't exploring different facets of an application just as important as using it for its intended purpose? This led me to consider how many educators have so poisoned students thinking that being "off-task" is even considered to be a bad thing. Have we so stymied students that they believe if they are not formally "learning," if they become "sidetracked," that they are wasting their time? When did curiosity become a negative thing? (When it killed the proverbial cat, I suppose.) As I think about it, if young adults find new media a distraction, then perhaps "learning" has become too narrowly defined. This then led me to wonder how we can "measure" self-directed learning in this new media context? In other words, how can we show the different levels of learning that takes place in these new contexts?

Hence the title of my talk. CMSes lumber along like radio, still playing into the air as they continue to gradually shift ever farther away on the margins. In comparison, Web 2.0 is like movies and tv combined, plus printed books and magazines. That’s where the sheer scale, creative ferment, and wife-ranging influence reside. This is the necessary background for discussing how to integrate learning and the digital world.

Moreover, unless we consider the CMS environment to be a sort of corporate intranet simulation, the CMS set of community skills is unusual, rarely applicable to post-graduation examples. In other words, while a CMS might help privacy concerns, it is at best a partial, not sufficient solution, and can even be inappropriate for already online students.

Think of a professor bringing a newspaper to class, carrying a report about the very subject under discussion. How can this be utilized practically? Faculty members can pick a Web service (Google News, Facebook, Twitter) and search themselves, sharing results; or students can run such queries themselves.