My blog will focus on tracking the progress of two Web 2.0-enabled courses set to begin in May 2008.  There are two objectives for this blog: 1) to document how students interact with Web 2.0 tools like wiki, blogging in their coursework; and 2) to determine the depth and breadth of student collaboration and contribution toward site content, as well as instructor experience.

A brief background of this project is appropriate.  I am the lead coordinator of a grant-funded project called the Building Careers in Early Childhood Education; its aim is to help childcare workers earn their Associate in Science Degree in Early Childhood Education by 2010.  The funder, Early Education & Care of Massachusetts, has awarded some funds to Bunker Hill Community College to provide qualified childcare workers the opportunity to take up to four pre-selected courses per year.  With the support and guidance from the early childhood education and human services department, the Workforce Development Center’s role is to operationalize the grant.  The Library & Information Center is a key partner as it shares its insights on how to best leverage Web 2.0 tools to courses.  The Workforce Development Center is a unit of the college that provides corporate training services to local businesses in the Greater Boston area. 

The idea to embed wiki and blogging to the BCE courses came to me from my personal explorations and tinkerings with social networking sites such as FaceBook, LinkedIn, Yelp, and others.  Social networking empowers people without software programming skills to create and share content. The same two key ingredients, I reasoned, could help us build a cohesive community in the same way social networking sites have provided.  Yet, ours would be a community focused on learning.  We cross-pollinate what goes on in the social networking sphere and bring certain elements into a learning environment.  This should be fun.

With the proliferation of Web 2.0 tools and the fact that Millenials are born and bred on the web, the implication on education is enormous.  If instructors continue to ignore this tech phenomenon, they will find it increasingly difficult to reach their students.  Who would blame the students for finding classes to be dull and boring if they are ingrained in the world of texting, facebooking, im’ing, YouTubing, etc…  Unless an instructor happens to be a dynamic facilitator, students will be lost to the prescriptive education model that is associated with the industrial-based (old) economy.  No, in a knowledge-based economy (new), the paradigm shifts.  When a paradigm shifts, “everything” – as the futurist Ken Barker would say — “goes back to zero”.  Therefore, in a knowledge-based economy, individuals are the knowledge creators and cultivators of relationships.  The age of prescriptive education is coming to a close and a new model of learning — supportive education — will rise to take a more preeminent role in the way people pursue and manage their education. 

You now have a glimpse of my view on education.  I will elaborate on the aforementioned concepts in future posts.  I welcome your feedback.