Learning 2.0 – a Rough
Guide
Miles Metcalfe, 2009-07-07

Web 2.0 and why
people use it
• What is “web 2.0”?
• An empty marketing term?
• Some key features:
• On-line application
• In a browser
• Social

What’s your Web 2.0?

It’s the social that
matters
• “Social” software is part of the business
model
• Viral marketing
• “Social” is free on network systems
• “Social” is part of the appeal
• It’s good to talk

We are social animals

Some things you can do
• Stay in touch with friends
• Facebook
• Run a small business
• Google Apps
• Build an online community
• Ning

Some new stuff
• Publish yourself • Asynchronous radio
• Wordpress • Podcasting
• Share your thoughts • Instant notifications
• Twitter, Posterous • Twitter, Identi.ca
• Share media • “Life-streaming”
• Flickr, YouTube • Ping.fm, Friendfeed

Learners are doing it
• Friends on Facebook
• Following on Twitter
• Videos on YouTube
• Music where they can find it for free!

Block and ban?

Learners are doing it
for themselves?
Our-space, your-space, and the
Holy Grail

Learning 2.0
• Digital literacy
• For teachers as well as students
• It’s not just about “cool tools”
• A pedagogy that recognises web 2.0
• And repurposes web 2.0 for education

Tools: the social stack
Re-syndicated to the individual, organised
Personal tools to suit own preferences
Interest integrated into knowledge
Group collaboration through working together
Blogging and commenting: attention
Personal networks becomes interest
Social signals Store, share, tag and classify
RSS feeds, searches, sites of interest,
Feeds and flows people of interest
After Headshift

Pedagogy of
participation
• Recognising new competencies
• What is plagiarism anyway?
• Negotiating the private and the public
• Participation, contribution, esteem and
reputation

Learning spaces
• User-owned technology
• Not computer barns
• Wireless networks?
• Electricity – certainly!
• Flexible spaces

Not everyone has a
computer…
• But just about everyone has a phone
• How much do you save if you don’t build
computer labs?
• Not everyone wants to go online

The science bit
• “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World”
• Use of Web 2.0 high and pervasive from 11
to 15 upwards
• New sense of communities of interest and
networks
• Information literacies represent deficit area
• Social software for teaching not obvious

Over for the VLE?

Over for classrooms?

Joining the dots
• RSS feeds
• Magic tags
• Life-streaming
• Widgets
• Yahoo! Pipes

Cool tools

Collaborative video
Tricky
http://www.kaltura.com/

Social Bookmarking
Easy!
http://www.delicious.com/

Social network
Some
Effort
http://www.ning.com/

Microblogging
Some
Effort
http://identi.ca/

Instant podcasting
Tricky
http://audioboo.fm/

Multimedia blogging
Easy!
http://www.posterous.com/

Learners are doing it

Supporting innovation
• Interoperation – RSS, APIs
• Privacy and ownership – Data portability
• Describing stuff – metadata, tagging, magic
tags
• Authenticity – authentication, OpenID,
profiles
• The policy environment

Risks
• Digital divide
• Digital literacy
• The “right” service provider
• Foundations in the sand

Thanks!