Talk:Learning through Web 2.0

From The Schommunity Wiki

Why are we doing this

Ok - several motivations from my point of view:

• Staff development activity to explore different ways of thinking about the design of an OU course (moving away from 'OU Classic' to something more interactive ... there is a staff development day at the OU for members of the Dept of Education on the 18th September and I'm hoping that this course will provide a focus for some folk on that day.
• I believe that the most substantial learning linked with an OU course happens in the course team when they are developing the course - so wanted to engage 'learners' as course developers (so want the course to provide activities which actually result in the course being redesigned and added to by the 'learners'
• There are lots of folk around who have expertise re Web 2.0 and learning, and child protection etc - and lots of folk who want to learn about these things - so having a course would be very useful

Who is the audience

Anyone interested in using Web 2.0 to enhance learning who is capable of reading all this stuff. If we could engage professional educators in using the course (with their students) that would be cool.

How's the course going to work?

Well that is the 200,000,000 $ question ... and I guess that will be a key part of what we start to struggle with on the 18th September.

Some of my personal thoughts about how it might work -

• all the 'content' will be on the wiki and freely available to anyone to read (and indeed edit).
• the course will be structured around activities - which engage the participants in finding information (in the wiki or elsewhere), building up useful sets of links/notes, talking with other people about specific aspects of Web 2.0 and learning, reflecting on all of the above, and adding to/extending the course/activities themselves
• I guess the OU will want to find a way to make money out of this (and so might other people) - one approach would be for the OU to offer:
  • closed forums moderated by a lecturer in which some of the debates could be facilitated and extended
  • feedback on 'assignments'
  • accreditation