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= = = = =A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything=

**Will Richardson**
[|Weblogg-ed.com] [|Powerful Learning Practice Network] (Co-Founder)

http://willrichardson.wikispaces.com

NEW!!! [|Solution Tree Summit Keynote]

[|List of links]

[|"Footprints in a Digital Age"] (Educational Leadership, November, 2008) [|"World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others"] (Edutopia, December 2008)
 * Contact**: weblogged@gmail.com
 * Author**: [|Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms] ( Corwin Press, 2nd Ed, July 2008)
 * Latest Article**s:

(**NOTE**: //Keep the conversation going by adding a comment at the discussion tab above or by simply adding my name or the tag "willrichardson" to any blog post you may write which will then be displayed at the bottom of this page. Thanks!// )

Some Quotes to Think About:
"It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change" – **Charles Darwin** "The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." -- **Alvin Toffler** "Sometimes traveling to a new place leads to great transformation" --**Fortune Cookie from PF Chang's, Austin, TX** “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists” — **Eric Hoffer** "The kind of questioning, collaborative, active, lateral rather than hierarchical pedagogy that participatory media both forces and enables is not the kind of change that takes place quickly or at all in public schools." -- **Howard Rheingold** "For any given organization, the important questions are 'When will the change happen?" and "What will change?" The only two answers we can rule out are never, and nothing." --[|Clay Shirky] "This isn't the time to use technology to refine the model we had before; this is a time to harness technology to let children go as far and as fast as they want." **--Stephen Heppel**


 * My Goals:**
 * To start conversations
 * To ask questions
 * To challenge your thinking about teaching and learning
 * My Lenses:**
 * Parent
 * [|Former Educator]
 * [|Blogger]

This is a very challenging moment for educators. Our children are headed for a much more networked existence, one that allows for learning to occur 24, 7, 365, one that renders physical space much less important for learning, one that will challenge the relevance of classrooms as currently envisioned, and one that challenges our roles as teachers and adult learners.
 * The Big Premise:**


 * The World is Changing**
 * “This is a period of prolonged and profound transition in the ways we relate to communication and information.” [|Henry Jenkins]
 * [|Toyota overtakes GM in world auto sales].
 * In just a decade’s time, we’ll have gone from half the world never having made a telephone call to half the world owning a phone. ([|Mark Pesce)]
 * UNESCO says there will be more "educated people" in the next 30 years than in the sum of human history to date. (Cited in the TED Talks video with [|Sir Ken Robinson].)
 * The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that most American workers will change jobs between 10 and 14 times by age 38.
 * "Hypertransparent and hyperconnected world." Dov Seidman, [|How]
 * The Change: The Read/Write Web**
 * It's as easy to create and publish content as it is to consume it.
 * "[|Web 2.0]"


 * The Web is Changing Politics**
 * [|Barack Obama]--500,000 members, 8,000 affinity groups
 * [|ObamaTwitter]
 * [|Texas Precinct Wiki]
 * [|The Machinery of Hope] (Rolling Stone)
 * [|Obama YouTube site]
 * [|Find Groups on Obama site]
 * Kansas Senate candidate [|changes fund raising models]
 * We [|are empowered]. (Ira Socol, [|WSJ article])


 * The Web is Changing Government**
 * [|US Intelligence Agencies are using wikis] to communicate and collect information more effectively. ("Open Source Spying")
 * [|The United Nations is using wikis] to help decision making processes. (MSNBC)
 * [|Australian Government Caught Editing Wikipedia] (The Age)


 * The Web is Changing Journalism/Media**
 * "My readers know more than I do." --Dan Gillmor
 * [|USA Today] example (Gray Googler's article)
 * We can [|contribute our own reporting]. (iReport)
 * Newspapers are [|all a Twitter].
 * [|Newspaper Death Watch site].
 * [|We all make editorial decisions] for the group. (Digg.com)
 * Traditional models for music and movies are quickly becoming obsolete
 * [|Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog] from the New York Times Magazine
 * Nine Inch Nails gave away it's [|new collection of mp3s for free with a Creative Commons license], and it was still the [|top selling collection on Amazon in 2008].
 * [|Surfthechannel.com] Any movie or TV show streamed to your computer.
 * Or [|MyGazines.com], where you can access any magazine you like.
 * This is a [|REMIX culture which pushes creativity]. (Kutiman Thru-You)
 * We can even have [|iPhone bands].
 * We are [|the watchdogs]. ([|Protest Death])
 * [[image:http://www.gapingvoid.com/ms2126B-thumb.jpg align="left"]]The Web is Changing Business**
 * Markets are conversations AND relationships, not transactions or products. Advertising is not a relationship. ([|Cluetrain Manifesto)]
 * Allstate and Sara [|1], [|2], [|3], [|4]
 * Look at the conversations about [|Amazon's Kindle e-book reader].
 * Or look at what [|happened to Spore].
 * The fastest growing companies [|are adopting social media].
 * Take a look at how Cisco sees the new "[|Human Network] " where "you subscribe to people, not magazines."
 * The [|Goldcorp story] (Canadian Mining Company)
 * "This generation will transform the workplace and the way business is conducted to an extent not witnessed since the "organization man" of the 1950s." Don Tapscott, Wikinomics, pg. 54
 * Accenture, which spent $700 million on education last year, says its 38,000 consultants and most of its service workers take course on collaborating with offshore colleagues. ([|Business Week])
 * Challenging Times for Educators:**
 * Our students are leading us.
 * Participating more
 * Collaborating more
 * Creating more
 * 71% of students with online access use social networking tools on a weekly basis ([|NSBA])
 * 75% of college students have a Facebook site
 * More statistics on the [|social networking divide].
 * Their [|notion of privacy is shifting] dramatically
 * Our kids use social networks [|to grieve publicly] as well. ([|Facebook] login required.)
 * [|Local story about teen's substance abuse issues] culled from social networking pages. (Hunterdon County Democrat)
 * Being "Googleable" can be a good or a [|bad thing]. (Virginia teachers on Facebook)
 * We are entering a time of //deeply personalized, passion based learning//. (John Seeley Brown)
 * "Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers or adults, and notions of expertise and authority have been turned on their heads." ([|Article]) [|Living and Learning with Digital Media (.pdf)]
 * That makes our current curricula less and less relevant to our students.
 * More and more, the expectation is to create, not consume, yet we're not creators.
 * The amount of information is infinite and overwhelming.
 * Pace of change is lightspeed
 * [|Multitouch computers]
 * [|iPhone] as the "Ultimate Study Guide"
 * [|Wiis as SmartBoards]
 * [|Over 5,000 Web 2.0 apps]
 * Differing levels of access
 * 21 percent of households with an annual income of $30,000 or less had a broadband connection at home in 2006.
 * And what happens when municipal wifi gives kids unfiltered access in schools?
 * Yet we are becoming [|hyperconnected]. (Nortel study .[|pdf])
 * From "anywhere, anytime" to "everywhere, all the time."
 * Standardized tests still emphasize content
 * Our idea of [|presence] is changing as well . ([|Facebook] login required.)
 * Legal liabilities are unclear.
 * We block instead of teach
 * Filtering does not work
 * A Melbourne student disabled the Australian governments $84 million porn filter in minutes. ([|Herald Sun])
 * Restricting use of technologies will not work
 * As wireless becomes ubiquitous, students will use their devices in schools. ([|Local Schools Battling High Tech Distractions])
 * Fewer than 25 percent of educators feel comfortable teaching students how to protect themselves from online predators and cyberbullies. ([|District Administration Magazine])
 * In the next 10 years, over [|18 million teachers will be needed worldwide], over 2 million of them in the US (roughly half the education workforce.)
 * Our own time is limited.
 * [[image:http://myskitch.com/willrichardson/del.icio.us_network_explorer-20071017-072045.jpg width="275" height="241" align="left"]]The Web is Challenging Traditional Approaches to How We Learn**
 * Learning is not about acquiring knowledge as much as it is about building networks. (Articulated by [|George Siemens].)
 * My own learning has been transformed due primarily to the network I have become a part of.
 * My blog, [|Weblogg-ed] is an example of network creation. It's where my most powerful learning has taken place. Here are a couple of examples: "[|Dear Kids, You Don't Have to Go to College]" and "[|Owning the Teaching...and the Learning]
 * We build our [|own learning networks]. (delicious network visualizer) And in [|our networks], (webpages as graphs) who we know is not as important as who they know.
 * Our goal for our kids must be to help them [|create, navigate and grow their own personal learning networks] in [|safe, effective and ethical ways].
 * And our networks [|can be with us wherever we are]. The live Web is replacing the static web. (Twitter)
 * And our networks connect our passion for learning.
 * My good fortune is that I have potential teachers visiting from [|around the world] . (ClustrMap)
 * Contrast that to most of our kids' classrooms which are still [|defined by four walls].
 * We are at times teachers and at times learners. Our roles shift with each interaction.
 * Our kids are already creating their own networks. [|Fan Fiction] is one site where "affinity groups" meet.
 * They are using networks to [|create change around the world]. (Taking IT Global)
 * They are creating their own learning environments using a variety of media. ([|Bow Drill video])
 * And they are using networks to [|make a difference in their communities] ([|Laura Stockman]).
 * And like it or not, [|MySpace] is another example of kids creating their own networks.
 * But so are [|student role models], (Meg Cabot)
 * Millions and millions of [|people are participating] in the new social networking services. (Wikipedia)
 * Research is beginning to show that social networks have a [|positive influence on learning].
 * And teachers [|have their own as well]. (Classroom 2.0)
 * But we can help our kids to start creating their own networks as well and [|work with people around the world]. (Nata Village)
 * We can also build networks in virtual worlds. In fact, over 70 colleges already have.


 * The Web is Challenging our Assumptions About Knowledge, Information and Literacy**
 * It's not as much about content anymore as much as it is about context. Knowledge and information used to be scarce...that's what our education system was built upon.
 * But how much of that information do we really remember and use? "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?" How many sides to a [|trapezoid]?
 * But today, I can learn anything, anytime, anywhere providing I have access.
 * Knowledge is [|no longer scarce]. (MIT) (1.4 million visitors per month from every country, 2,000 courses, 440,000 course downloads per month.) And now there is a section of content [|just for high schools].
 * Or check out the [|YouTube channel from Berkeley].
 * Or check out the catalog of [|podcasts from Stanford on iTunesU].
 * Or this [|free physics textbook] (being used by the state of Va.)
 * Here are [|free college texts] via shared, open content. (Flat World Knowledge)
 * We can connect to information and build knowledge from it [|collaboratively, and freely]. (Wikiversity)
 * And we tend to look at knowledge as hard or unchanging...but these days, knowledge is soft. It's [|constantly changing]. (Wikipedia) To date, almost 6.5 million articles have been created in some 250 languages by almost 6 million people.
 * (By the way, [|errors are everywhere]. What would you do with [|this textbook] ?)[[image:http://myskitch.com/willrichardson/twitter-20071017-072113.jpg align="right"]]
 * And the collaborative construction of knowledge is effective...[|just ask the CIA]. (Open Source Spying)
 * In this world, we cannot only seek information, but [|information seeks us]. (Pageflakes)
 * But in a world where anyone can create and publish information, [|how do we know what to trust]? (Dove Beauty)
 * How do we teach our students (and ourselves) to make sense of a much more complex literacy regarding [|who to trust] as authoritative sources. When we [|can be manipulated] or [|be the manipulator].
 * Even [|NCTE describes literacy as "malleable."]
 * We can no longer be "just" readers...we must be editors as well. And we [|read] (Diigo) and write together.
 * More and more we are living in an information world that is digitally linked together. ("[|Scan This Book]")
 * And reading is no longer a passive, linear activity that deals simply with text. How do we read [|multimedia and hypertext]? (Flypmedia)
 * In this world, we must read with an ear for writing and responding, engaging and interacting.


 * The Web is Challenging our Assumptions about Classrooms and Teaching**
 * If teachers are no longer the arbiters of knowledge in the classroom, our roles need to change.
 * Classrooms [|can be global and anywhere]. (Supplementing my kids education.) Teachers come in [|all shapes and sizes]. (Andrew from Perth, Scotland.)
 * Take this teacher's Tweet: "In Gr.8 - using [|Google Earth], [|Flickr], [|YouTube], [|bbcnews], to learn about the protests in Burma .. world at their fingertips, AS IT HAPPENS!"
 * Now we have the opportunity to be connectors, to bring our classrooms to the world in a variety of ways. We can [|find other teachers] who may know more than we do. (Secret Life of Bees)
 * Here's [|another example] of students learning from mentors. (Polar Science)
 * We can also connect our students to other students around the world so they can learn together. (Flat Classrooms Wiki)
 * And in a world where all of our students can be content producers as well as content consumers, we need to re-envision the work we ask them to do.
 * They can [|teach what they know]. (Radio Willow Web)
 * Our students can [|teach in powerful ways]. (Pre Cal)
 * And they can share their experiences in meaningful ways, like [|Sam Jackson's Education Blog]--12th Grade student blog about college application process
 * As [|Marco Torres] says, students' work "[|should have wings]." ("Parents")


 * We Need a 2020 Vision for Education (Bud Hunt)**
 * [|Mark Pesce]--"Capture Everything, Share Everything, Open Everything, Only Connect"
 * Those who don't understand these shifts will be "left behind." ([|2009 Horizon Report])
 * How do we learn to help our students leverage the technologies they are already using instead of have them check them at the door? (Especially when our students can [|get around our efforts anyway].)
 * How do we change? How do we re-envision teaching for a vastly changed world?
 * What do we have to [|unlearn about schooling and education]?
 * How do we the use of these technologies in our own practice?
 * "We use social media in the classroom not because our students use it, but because we are afraid that social media might be //using them// - that they are using social media blindly, without recognition of the new challenges and opportunities they might create." --[|Michael Wesch]
 * Top challenges for 2009-- [|Educause]
 * How do we begin to [|change the culture of schools]?
 * How do we begin to [|add nodes to our own network maps]? (Blank ClustrMap)
 * To make sure we're as prepared as we can be to [|lead our kids into their futures].
 * To take advantage of these opportunities, we all need to:
 * Find our passions
 * Connect to others who share those passion
 * Participate
 * Build learning networks with other teachers and learners
 * Model our learning for others
 * It starts with [|one small step].

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