I am always surprised by the amount of “web 2.0 bashing” by learning and development practitioners. My most recent experience was during a class about educational theory where a guest speaker had
come along to tell us about web 2.0 as applied to learning. Basically -e-Learning 2.0 as defined by Stephen Downes.
I feel compelled to address this briefly as it seems to me to be a contradiction. Web 2.0 is a social tool, it is used socially, that is how it emerged, unlike the classroom, educators do not “own” this domain.
Web 2.0 is designed for collaboration and communication, which presents a conflict with the banking model of education. In a classroom, we seem to face the teacher, who plops information into us while we sit there passively, in web 2.0 environments, those “chairs” form a circle, where everyone’s input is valid and people feed from each other, not just the teacher.
We do not naturally learn by passively sitting in a classroom accepting information, we have been conditioned into this as a result of the industrial revolution because mass production meant that the
kiddies needed to be out of the factory and it seems the same mass production was applied to humans and machines. Prior to this, people learned from those around them in social situations it seems. Consequently web 2.0 presents an opportunity (and a conflict) to return to social learning, where people learn by collaborating and communicating because that it how we use it already. We expect to be able to comment, contribute and collaborate using these technologies!
