I feel like an ant
I love TED and the presentation "How do ants know what to do?" by Deborah Gordon affirmed that once again.
Bill Kerr is sceptical about Web2.0 but I reckon that it is the best thing since sliced bread. The last few years has seen my professional learning simply soar. I am frustrated with school workshops where they bring in highly paid presenters where we could be accessing international level ideas for free whenever. What a waste of school finances, state finances and my time. Various conferences are not much different although the F2F networking is cool. Web2.0 connects me with a network of ants that let me know what is going on in small byte sized packets that are easy to digest.
A bit like the ants in "How do ants know what to do?" I touch antenna and crudely determine what people are talking about and this guides me in what direction I could be looking in and what task I might need to perform. A bit simplistic - fair enough. I don't read anywhere near all of my email or RSS feeds. I look for trends and things that are out of the ordinary.
Bill Kerr is sceptical about Web2.0 but I reckon that it is the best thing since sliced bread. The last few years has seen my professional learning simply soar. I am frustrated with school workshops where they bring in highly paid presenters where we could be accessing international level ideas for free whenever. What a waste of school finances, state finances and my time. Various conferences are not much different although the F2F networking is cool. Web2.0 connects me with a network of ants that let me know what is going on in small byte sized packets that are easy to digest.
A bit like the ants in "How do ants know what to do?" I touch antenna and crudely determine what people are talking about and this guides me in what direction I could be looking in and what task I might need to perform. A bit simplistic - fair enough. I don't read anywhere near all of my email or RSS feeds. I look for trends and things that are out of the ordinary.
Labels: information, web 2.0
posted by Wara @ 7:29 pm
1 Comments:
At 10:01 pm,
Graham Wegner said…
Bill is an important critical voice to be reading but I find that I start to question my own experiences if I read too deeply into his posts. I too have had my professional learning transformed by Web 2.0 and the sorts of ideas I'm willing to try out and push within my role are a direct result of my online network utilising these easy to use tools. I do worry that Bill tends to categorise teachers who are Web 2.0 enthusiasts as shallow followers of the same gospel - well, that's how it comes across some times.
I totally agree about the pulling in of experts via the web for conferences rather than bankrolling the f2f presenter. The classic example was getting Stephen Downes to present via videolink at CEGSA - world class elearning expert, compared to the money shelled out for other keynotes with less to say (or in some cases, just rehashing what can easily be found on the web.) Jimmy Wales is another person who commanded big money to be live down under but the first 30 minutes of his educationau presentation can be found matched word for word in several video presentations on the web.
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