Here’s an interesting bit of a presentation from Educause entitled The Participatory Education Revolution (abstract). Kinda like that cluetrain for education meme that Scott Adams was playing with a bit ago.
“Education is a conversation. A conversation between teacher and student. A conversation amongst students, educators and industry. A conversation with the communities in which they exist. Education has long embraced the need for conversations to occur in order for effective learning to take place. But technology has limited the ability for expansive and inclusive conversations to occur across time and space.
Social Networking Technologies, underpinned by Network Computing, are driving a revolution in the way conversations – and education – take place. Education will change forever, based on more participatory modes of teaching and sharing knowledge. Blogs, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), Wikis, and Podcasting are a few of the earliest manifestations of this revolution. As are the underpinnings of the revolution – open sourcing of ideas and intellectual property, collaborative knowledge development and research, and the emergence of powerful communities of influence….
…Educators must harness the power of this network while applying Social Networking technology to education itself. Network Effects will advantage the early movers who will have created the connections and conversations. This will be the Participatory Education Revolution.” [Andrew Lark]
Andy has also posted the presentation which accompanies it although he’s done so through some bizarre document storage system called xdrive which has utterly stopped me from accessing it… very odd indeed.
It’s now hosted at IncSub, here, so go get it!
Anyway, the best thing about this is what the very significant person sending it to me commented:
“What does it all mean though for the design of organisations? For the leadership and management of organisations? Particularly for organisations like universities committed to e-learning?”
Sweeeeet :o)