Content is King?

Is it really? That was the moniker of web 1.0 Without killer content websites died away, they were used as sources of factual info as much as anything else. While that is still true to an extent, the advent of web 2.0 has meant interactivity above all. Want people want to do is communicate and collaborate.

Of course that fits right into the educational agenda. The internet is not a textbook. It is not reliably edited, nor is it tailored for a particular course, nor is it ever exactly at the right level. Stuff isnt always easy to find. What the internet can do really well is to facilitate meaningful communication. Look at Facebook - all the people we keep in touch with more than we used to. In a learning context the power of this is in the connections that can be made. The germs of ideas that can be nourished.

Think of teachers moderating forums on a topic after directing students to evaluate a range of web sources. Think of mobile learning; podcast mashups put together on a whim after a topic for fun by a student that becomes a vital part of GCSE revision.

Content is filtered (obviously), communication rules.