Innovate Online - Wiki & DD

In the latest Innovate there are a couple of stories that caught my eye. The first (Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom by S. Pixy Ferris and Hilary Wilder) on wikis, talks about how wikis are (or can act) like a bridge between text based and oral pedagogy through their collaborative nature. I may have mentioned it before, but one of the papers that I've been thinking about writing for a long time makes use of this idea - how technologies of the Web2.0 world have helped us return in part, to a more oral society as static print begins to primacy and "folksomic" print gains traction as a product of multiple minds. The second (From Digital Divide to Digital Dividend: What Will It Take? by John Daniel and Paul West) speaks to the digital divide. While it seems to say that the boon (dividend) is that there is a dollar to be made (something that personally I think isn't very noble when it comes to education, but I know many people who have found ways to get rich teaching) when it comes to teaching the adults of the world, the important part is the approach. Small scale, simple and locally sensitive projects that knit together into a larger worldwide, emergent entity. In the end, even though there may be some getting more out of these projects than others in the short term, it's the greater good that will be elevated if we are all just a little more educated. Technorati Tags: Innovate Online