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Lowering communication costs doesn’t just lead to more communication, it leads to qualitatively different behavior by web users.

Lowering the interaction costs of communication leads to perhaps the most important feature of Web 2.0: its inclusive, collaborative capacity. The new Read/Write web is allowing people to work together, share information, and reach new and potentially enormous audiences outside some of the traditional structures of power, authority, and communication in our society. The social developments that have resulted from the Web 2.0 phenomena are best understood through a lens of democratization, but we must keep in mind the caveat that democracy means many different things in many different places (Haste and Hogan, 2006).

Web logs, or blogs

Two broad approaches exist for learning technology implementation: The adoption of a centralized learning management approach. This may include development of a central learning support lab where new courses are developed in a team-based approach—consisting of subject matter expert, graphic designers, instructional designer, and programmers. This model can be effective for creation of new courses and programs receiving large sources of funding. Most likely, however, enterprise-wide adoption (standardizing on a single LMS) requires individual departments and faculty members to move courses online by themselves. Support may be provided for learning how to use the LMS, but moving content online is largely the responsibility of faculty. This model works well for environments where faculty have a high degree of autonomy, though it does cause varying levels of quality in online courses. Personal learning environments (PLEs) are a recent trend addressing the limitations of an LMS. Instead of a centralized model of design and deployment, individual departments select from a collage of tools—each intending to serve a particular function in the learning process. Instead of limited functionality, with highly centralized control and sequential delivery of learning, a PLE provides a more contextually appropriate toolset. The greater adaptability to differing learning approaches and environments afforded by PLEs is offset by the challenge of reduced structure in management and implementation of learning. This can present a significant challenge when organizations value traditional lecture learning models.

Self-organised learning networks provide a base for the establishment of a form of education that goes beyond course and curriculum centric models, and envisions a learner-centred and learner controlled model of lifelong learning. In such learning contexts learners have the same possibilities to act that teachers and other staff members have in regular, less learner-centred educational approaches. In addition these networks are designed to operate without increasing the workload for learners or staff members.

Instead of learning housed in content management systems, learning is embedded in rich networks and conversational spaces. The onus, again, falls on the university to define its views of learning.

To build the module, we used a rapid e-learning authoring tool called Adobe Captivate. Some other popular programs for this kind of rapid authoring are Articulate and Lectora. Captivate is great for building interactive self-guided simulations and branching scenarios.

We created our unit in PearlTrees by adding links to all the web-based readings, videos and articles for the course and then embedded it into our LMS.

We decided used Prezi to create a Case Study Library with six categories (Health, Education, etc.) to introduce our students to the tools organizations are using to address different elements of the peacebuilding and international development spectrum.

Such experiences may point the way to how personal learning environments will evolve in the future. The PLE will not be one application running on the desktop or in a web browser. Rather, it will be multiple applications running on may different devices. It is also important to understand that learners will use different devices in different contexts and for different purposes. The PLE will be based on networks of people with whom learners interact, they may adapt a particular tool for communication and interaction in a particular context but then cease to sue that tool when that context has passed. In previous projects linked to mobile learning we have tended to focus on how to transmit standardised learning materials and applications to different platforms and devices. The PLE will be comprised of not only all the software tools, applications and services we use for learning but the different devices we use to communicate and share knowledge.

Expecting students to write in our classrooms for hit-or-miss praise is criminal. Their nimble fingers can text an entire piece of writing via their mobile device to a relevant audience online at the same time they publish to a worldwide network. For them, the pay is in the joy of publication, in the act of making their work known, and of partaking of the work of others.

Take advantage of over 20 digital tools for students (Sidebar #2 - Digital Tools for Students).

You can easily transition from notes and highlights kept in Diigo.com social bookmarking tool to a written piece that appropriately cites content. Check Sidebar #3 for Electronic Citation Resources.

since most research papers are based on quotes used from various sources, Diigo provides a way to not only bookmark your sources, but also to manage and access your quotes, notes, and analysis.

The best way to do research is know what your thesis is for a given topic.

Having a thesis in mind can help you narrow research, even if you change your thesis during the process.

Sharing content is not considered unethical; indeed, the hoarding of content is viewed as antisocial [9]. And open content is viewed not merely as nice to have but essential for the creation of the sort of learning network described by Siemens [10].

In a nutshell, what was happening was that the Web was shifting from being a medium, in which information was transmitted and consumed, into being a platform, in which content was created, shared, remixed, repurposed, and passed along. And what people were doing with the Web was not merely reading books, listening to the radio or watching TV, but having a conversation, with a vocabulary consisting not just of words but of images, video, multimedia and whatever they could get their hands on. And this became, and looked like, and behaved like, a network.

Blogging is very different from traditionally assigned learning content. It is much less formal. It is written from a personal point of view, in a personal voice. Students' blog posts are often about something from their own range of interests, rather than on a course topic or assigned project. More importantly, what happens when students blog, and read reach others' blogs, is that a network of interactions forms-much like a social network, and much like Wenger's community of practice.

“There’s this notion that technology is networked and social. It does alter the power relationship between the educator and the learner, a learner has more autonomy, they have more control. The expectation that you wait on the teacher to create everything for you and to tell you what to do is false.”

“At the beginning, we had quite a number of students feeling quite overwhelmed because you would get 200 or 300 posts going into a discussion forum per day and that’s just about impossible to follow,” Siemens says.

Even if students in massively open online courses master the technology and overcome their virtual stage fright, a third problem remains: how to recognize the value of a learning experience that isn’t for credit.

there are no written exams for those who successfully complete the weekly assignments of regular social media engagement.

students’ learning improved when they embarked on wiki projects. “Rather than trying to read a textbook and regurgitate it for an exam, in order to write coherent segments, you have to actually intellectually understand it and be able to craft your own words, and that is a higher level of learning challenge,” he said. “All the research on learning theory suggests this is in fact a better way to learn.”

“It’s not something that we’re used to,” said Stuart Lee, an undergraduate who took Mr. Netzley’s class and helped create a wiki page on digital media in Japan. “We usually see the professor as the gatekeeper of information.”

“The notion of saving face really complicates the learning process,” he said, “because how do you learn if you’re not able to make mistakes and get feedback?”

The use of web logs (“blogs”) has become a popular addition to many college courses as faculty try to find new ways to integrate this popular technology into the classroom. (Beeson, 2005; Quible, 2005; Ducate, 2005, Glogoff, 2005).   By the end of 2004, 32 million Americans said they had read a blog, eight million Americans had created blogs, and almost half were created by people under age 30 (Reine, 2005).   In fact, Huffaker (2005) cites several studies that reveal that a significant number of blog authors are younger than 20.  Lenhart (2006) notes that by 2006, these numbers had increased to 12 million American adults who keep a blog, and 57 million American adults who say they read them. Thus, students come to the classroom with a facility for maintaining and communicating through blogs.  Beeson (2005) argues that it is an approach that is more in keeping with their way of thinking (29).  With the increased popularity of blogs, faculty members have been integrating them into their courses to enhance class discussion.  Past research has summarized findings from case studies involving the use of blogs in a single course (Glogoff, 2003; Quible, 2005; Ducate, 2005).  The authors of this study, conducted at a business university, assigned a similar blogging exercise in three different courses—expository writing, e-commerce, and government--in order to introduce students to the use of blogs in their respective disciplines and to help students prepare for meaningful classroom discussion. This study finds that by completing the required readings and then posting discussion questions and reflections on topics of interest to which their classmates can respond--essentially beginning the conversation prior to the class session--students become more engaged in the course material. This exercise requires students not only to read the required course materials but to engage with them critically in order to move beyond a superficial understanding of the materials.  By using the same assignment and assessment tool, the authors found that blogs can be effective in enhancing class discussion in a range of disciplines and in integrating liberal learning into professional programs.            Blogging in the Classroom

Like online threaded discussion groups, blogs are an easy way to engage in dialogue on the web outside the classroom. The availability of several blog providers such as Google’s blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, and WordPress.com make it free and easy to set up, manage, and update blogs frequently and without additional support.   By using blogs “students become familiar with blogging, a tool now used by an ever-increasing number of employers to support routine operating functions” (Quible, 2005, p. 76).

Since blogs are a fairly recent pedagogical tool, new scholarship has emerged that points to its benefits in the classroom.  The ability of students and faculty to easily update an online journal promotes blogging as a new form of communication to enhance class discussion and to create a community outside the classroom.  Flatley (2005) argues that the technological medium provides a space where students can interact with one another, and it can open up the classroom space "where discussions are continued and where every student gets an equal voice" (p. 77).  In addition, blogs can promote collaboration (Flatley, 2005; Williams & Jacobs, 2004; Oravec, 2002).