The Vancouver Education Blogging Sessions at D’Arcy Norman Dot Net

What I refer to as Web 2.0, D’Arcy calls the read/write web. Others call it a “live” site- but the idea of 2-way interaction with the user is the concept we are trying to define. The original cool thing about the web was that a user could guide their experience through your site- choosing what they thought was important- vs. what you thought-an example:

Companies have been publishing brochures for a long time. There was always a battle over how much detail to put in them. With the web, you can keep drilling down to more and more detail until the customer has the information they want, with a brochure- if it isn’t there, oh well. But, until recently- that was as far as it would go. Now, you can give feedback right away, ask deeper questions, or even rearrange how you view the data. There is no reason to still create a printed “brochure”- since it’s always going to be inadequate.

When it comes to education- especially higher education- the dialog between teacher and student was the core value added proposition in the learning environment. Secondary, was the interaction between students under the guidance of the teacher. So forward thinking educators are using the blog platform to create these linkages. But with all things new, how to do this is still being established. I am now asking all interns to set up their own WordPress.com blogs- just to get some experience with the new web, and to see how they think and write. I have also guided a forward thinking doctoral candidate to a blog to build his resume to the world. But D’Arcy has brought up a key point on ownership and oversite of these blogs- if they are truly part of the learning experience, shouldn’t they remain with the student after they leave the institution? I’m even wondering if WordPress.com is a viable solution as opposed to a totally owned domain (See “how to blog” on this subject).

All this aside, the most important thing D’Arcy brought up was that blogs don’t need IT support as we know it. The simplicity of a blog is the beauty of it. It empowers people to do thier own thing on the web- which is why Blogosopher exists.