Thing #5

"School 2.0" is much like Web 2.0, it is a concept and a frame of mind. With all the technology available to us as educators, we are learning and teaching in a completely different way then ten or even five years ago. Richard MacManus summarizes in his post "that's what Web 2.0 means to me - everyday, non-technical people using Web technologies to enhance their own lives and businesses. The Web is an infrastructure, a foundation. What we create and build on the Web is what Web 2.0 is all about." This is a parallel transfer to School 2.0, we are using Web technologies to enahnce our teaching lives and education of our students. We are taking what is available to us in the Web infrastructure and building off of it our knowledge, our lessons, almost anything we wish to relay to our students.
I believe that School 2.0 is not the future of education, but the now of education. We, as educators, and the persons responsible for the developing minds of children that will be our future leaders, have to be committed to prepare them to function on the world they will be entering. The world of the Web 2.0, or most likely Web 3.0 by that time. We have to prepare ourselves by staying on the forefront of technology development and share it with our students. We need to take every opportunity possible to incorporate it into our work with students so that it becomes second nature. Yes, they still need a foundation outside of technology, they do still need to know how to multiply 56 x 93 without a calculator but they also need ot know how to write it into a forumla on Microsoft Excel.