Yet another great video, Institutional Fear, presented at the 2008 ELI Educause Conference in the Fear 2.0 digi-drama session “Who’s Afraid of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and the Big Bad CMS?” Session Abstract:
Web 2.0 tools have the power to transform education. Such a transformation requires that faculty, students, and institutions take risks. With those risks comes fear, which is often unarticulated. How do you tackle this fear and make real change? (Join us to face this fear together in a multimedia, interactive miniplay).
The four discussion-provoking videos in the session were created and presented by faculty and staff at the University of California, the University of Texas, the University of Mary Washington, Bryn Mawr College, Oberlin College, and Middlebury College.
For a look at pedagogy and practice, interested faculty might also want to read “Wikis and Podcasts and Blogs! Oh, My! What Is a Faculty Member to Do?” from last fall’s Connect.
In the meantime, enjoy “Institutional Fear”… Do You Fear It?
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Who’s Afraid of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and the Big Bad CMS? No one. The base idea regarding Blogs, Wiki’s et al revolves around the idea of online communities.
Enter the blog. Now everyone can have a blog. Now everyone can read about anything people feel like putting online. This can be good, or bad depending on the source and situation.
We’ve seen in the news that there are lawsuits over people’s blog postings… discrimination, slander and other naughties online.
Ah the ever popular Wiki. Again – another online social community that has taken off. Another arena in which people can say and type whatever they want.
The problem with this Web 2.0 revolution is that people are taking Blogs and Wiki’s as gospel, fact…
There are a whole host of people who are actively posting to Blogs and Wiki’s to offer information, valid information, opinions etc. These people are the ones who started the Wiki movement. ‘Lets offer an area where we can post some good information and make it easy for other to update and/or correct.
The main problem there is that there are the other groups of people who are posting misinformation and at times they are doing this on purpose. This defeats the main reason why the wiki movement was started.
Podcasts – I don’t even know why that is included as something to be afraid of. The whole idea is offering another form of media to keep us all in the loop. I assume that there are those doobies out there that will try to corrupt that medium too…
Web, Web 2.0, Web 2.5, Web 3.0 whatever it is. We are in a period of time where we are coming away from our parents’ websites…. heck they probably didn’t have one, but the single page that goes on forever bland, single font monstrosity of a website is becoming a thing of the past.
Java, Flash, SWF, and other backend technologies are offering a whole new world of web based communication. Where once you needed extensive education and training to come up with a ‘flashy’ web site, now there are programs and templates that can do it for you in minutes.
Why should I write code when I can just drag this box across the screen? Why should I learn how to write HTML when I can get a free blog from x.y.z online?
Yes the Web 2.0 movement and the advancements in web technology have moved the threshold so everyone can do everything online… but what happens to the skill… the ambiance, the art of the web?
We can share our opinion about things, about how we hate this company, how that teacher gave you a bad grade and how your ex-best-friend did whatever.
A thing to remember in this new online world, Just because we can make flashy buttons and make things all cool and rant about whomever we want – does that mean we should?
-=- The Overseer -=-
The fact that the web and web publishing has become a tool of the people is great for democracy. Do we really want to reserve this access to the corporations, the “talented”, the “informed” or the otherwise “privileged”? Who makes those decisions? Yes, open tools and more contributors allows room for mistakes and imperfection (as in wikis), but as we’ve seen in the open source movement, the “wisdom of the crowd” usually prevails.
I don’t think greater access to the tools also will stop the art or artistic expression. It just means we’ll have more artists. 🙂