Lesson 13-Reponse to readings-The Future’s Bright, the Future is…

As LIBE 477 winds to a close, I am excited to be writing this final entry into my blog. A small measure of the scope of my learning lies in the fact that I didn’t even fully understand what a blog was in January. Now, only four short months later, my own little technological diary contains 33 entries and incorporates a gamut of technologies previously foreign to me: slidecasts, animoto videos, podcasts, Flickr slideshows, voicethreads, links to wikis, YouTube videos…the list goes on. I might be tempted to believe that, by the force of my somewhat fragile mastery of this cool Web 2.0 gagetry, I have achieved my Week One goal of muscling my “dinosaur brain into the 21rst Century”. Picking up on Futurelab’s “The Future is Bright, the Future is…(2007) reference, this would be little more than my own version of viewing Web 2.0 as early converts to automobiles viewed these as “horseless carriages”. Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 are more than just the sum of their gadgets, compelling though these gadgets might be. I believe this to be one of the most fundamental truths I have grasped by reading, viewing, experimenting and discussing my way through this course. What the immergence of Web 2.0 has created is a whole new integrated information landscape with staggering quantities of digital content, open choice, digital spaces for collaboration and participation in the larger global community and countless opportunities to both consume and create information (Todd, 2008). The result is that our students are creating their own learning environments everyday, whenever they access a YouTube video, go on Facebook or read the Twitters of those they follow. For this reason, Futurelab asks a vital question I believe all governments, school districts and individual educators must ask: “When e-learning provides so many resources and in a way so easily personalized to meet their specific needs, what added value can schooling bring to the educational process?” (Futurelab, 2007). There is no doubt that educators still have a vital role to play but this role absolutely must change if we want our schools to maintain any future relevance at all. No longer can teachers present themselves as “information experts” but rather as “facilitators” in accessing the information and the experts and as fellow contributors to the communal body of knowledge that is the Internet. As Futurelab emphasizes, our job will be to “help fashion a curriculum which will focus not on content but on equipping students with the skills they’ll need to select, evaluate and make most effective use of so much multimedia all-singing, all dancing material” (Futurelab, 2007). Here is where the “new literacies” we have spoken so much about come in to play. In his lecture, “Learning 2016”, Stephen Heppell adds his own list of literacies to those of fellow experts when he speaks of the necessity to teach students to “create, critique, collaborate and communicate” (2006). It will be vital that our schools teach these new literacies or I believe our future generations could actually end up taking the horrifying path depicted in Epic 2015 (Sloan and Thompson). Personally, one of the questions that “keeps me up at night” is how teachers and librarians can best advocate for their students in this area, when school districts are cutting technology budgets along with all the rest, axing specialist positions, librarians being some on top of the list, and enforcing outdated and misguided restrictions to technology access in the spirit of “protection”. On the flipside, as someone who has always been somewhat wary of the invasiveness of technology, I question whether such innovations as open source learner management systems and their kin might greatly dehumanize our teaching and learning environments, something I feel would be very sad. While I have appreciated the flexibility and richness of my on-line learning experience, I must admit I would have preferred at least some face-to-face contact. My final and very personal concern is “how the heck” I will mange to keep up with the ridiculously fast-paced evolution of the technological landscape. Through considerable time and effort, I have managed to scratch out a rather tenuous perch in the Web 2.0 world and now comes Web 3.0! Despite these reservations, I find myself much more open and comfortable with the idea of approaching and mastering new technologies and I am absolutely convinced of the necessity to do so. As I look to the 21st century, I tend to find comfort in the perspectives of those thinkers who can bring the debate back to certain essential truths. When Stephen Heppell speaks of the future, he puts a very hopeful and a positive slant on the Worldwide Web and all its associated technologies. He refers to the 21 Century as a “learning age and a transparent age” and perhaps an age where Web 2.0 and even Web 3.0 tools will be there quite simply for the purpose of “helping people to help each other” (Heppell, 2006).