web2.0

and I’m not sure how I feel.

With apologies to REM and to Bill Paxson in Aliens “It’s all over man!”  No more stodgy tweed-jacket with the patches lectures! It’s gonna be quick jump-cuts and machine gun guitar solos! Whoooo! Don Tapscott says so:

The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses. It’s a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their peril.

I take a backseat to no-one in my pedagogical “web utopianism.” Just in the past year I’ve used blogs, wikis, twitter, diigo, ning, slide rocket, netvibes, and any other Web 2.0 tool I don’t have to pay for. All this in the service of the “engaged classroom.” And when it’s good, it’s good. Students take control of their learning and blow me away with what they produce. But when it’s bad…look out!

But to me the more vexing question is whether we’re losing something profound when we lose an appreciation for the art of the lecture. I had a class this past semester where students had to sit through a lecture beforehand and to a person they came in jokingly desiring to “kill themselves” after having to sit through such drudgery. The faculty, on the other hand, loved it.

Throughout my life, I’ve gotten a lot out of lectures. I subscribe to a number of lecture based podcasts including UChannel and Big Ideas. To me, there is no substitute for someone who has mastered their subject area and can walk you through a topic in 60 or so minutes.

In all of our haste to embrace the learning styles of “digital natives,” we’ve haven’t adequately stopped to reflect upon what doing so means to education in general. For me, I’ve spend a lot of time emphasizing engagement…. but I don’t want to lose the challenge.

OK, the Internet provides citizens with new vehicles to get involved in the political process, but will people “walk through the portal”? We will soon find out. The WhiteHouse has created a site called “open for questions,” a Digg-like site where residents can submit questions and vote on their favorites. The president will answer some of the most popular questions at a Thursday town hall. Here’s a metric for how much desire there is to engage directly with the federal government — as of 6pm Eastern time on March 25th, 2009 33,040 people had submitted 34,090 questions and cast 1,226,081 votes. 32,000 out of over 300 million citizens is not much, but here’s what makes this so intriguing. Check out a random sampling of questions leading the “voting” so far:

“With over 1 out of 30 Americans controlled by the penal system, why not legalize, control, and tax marijuana to change the failed war on drugs into a money making, money saving boost to the economy? Do we really need that many victimless criminals?”

“We have been forced to slowly liquidate my wife’s 401K to make our monthly mortgage payments. We dread the implications ahead when we have to file our 2009 federal tax returns. Do you foresee leniency on 401K liquidating for “qualified” candidates?”

“Will we ever see high speed passenger rail service in the U.S.?”

“I’m hard working, always make my mortgage payment on time, and bought a house I knew I could afford. My ARM is adjusting, and I’m not eligible for any great program. Why haven’t better loan options become available for the responsible middle class”

Compare these questions to those posed by the media at last nights press conference:

Apparently the demand for marijuana law reform is huge (insert Peter Tosh lyrics here). Now I’m not saying that marijuana laws should be at the top of the president’s agenda, but it’s significant that the Web 2.0 provide a new mechanism for agenda access. Rather than relying on institutions to “problematize” issues for the public agenda, individual citizens can throw their hat in the ring and potentially get a brief hearing. The serious test will be whether large numbers of people watch the Thursday morning town hall. If they do, the “on-line town hall” become a new avenue for policy entrepreneurs to reach the public agenda.

Cool uses of Web 2.0 to augment the inaugural experience courtesy of students in my Internet and Politics course. HT: Ryan Kushigemachi and James DeHaan.

Flickr Photo Download: Before & After: WhiteHouse.gov

Search Inside Obama’s Inaugural Speech

By the Numbers: Inauguration Day’s Impact on Social Media

The crowd captures the inaugural moment for CNN

In our second installment of ThickPod, Ken, Don and I muse about the sociopolitical significance of LOLCats, I thoroughly impress Don by showing him that I know who Marshall McCluhan is and Ken breaks out some Latin. Here are the posts we discuss in the podcast:

Ken – The Web 2.0 Election

Don – Facebook, Mass Interpersonal Persuasion, and the Public Sphere

Jose – Aren’t we the Change We’ve Been Waiting For?

Enjoy. And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast RSS feed