Big+Shift+Essay

=// Will Richardson's Big Shift #2: Many, Many Teachers, 24/7 Learning //=

In Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, he talks about 10 "Big Shifts" in modern day education. These "Big Shifts" are brought on by advancements in technology, namely Web 2.0 tools. Web 2.0 tools bring new ways of communicating information over the internet that are more engaging, productive, and organized than plain text. Voice threads, podcasts and photosharing websites allow us to share content beyond the written word, and wikis and forums help organize information and create a place to discuss a centralized topic. One only needs a moment to see that all of this technology has a potential to contribute to education.

Richardson's Big Shift #2, Many, Many Teachers, 24/7 Learning, focuses on the idea that students are no longer bound to their professor and school library for instruction and help. Googling a topic returns thousands upon thousands of works written by many different people, or "teachers." These teachers range from other professors, other students, professionals in the field, to just average people with an opinion. The amount of information available to a person through the Internet is extravagant, but this does have a downside. Not all information on the Internet is valid and true, because anyone with a computer and an internet connection can publish and be heard, but I believe that since the Internet began, we have become more organized and efficient at filtering out bad information. Wikis are monitored and read by large groups of people, and since they each for the most part have some power over what information gets posted on them, the group as a whole works together to post information that at least the majority of them believe in. Another collection of information, maintained at a more professional level, is [|databases]that store published journals and articles. An automatic filter brought on by these sites is that they only house papers written by accredited authors. Furthermore, most of them provide reviews from other credible sources of people giving opinions on the paper. This level of information rivals what is offered at some campus libraries, not to mention a students professor.

Another way the Internet provides students with multiple "teachers" is that most university professors (and some high school teachers) post their class material online. Most of these websites are hosted on the department server, and the majority of them do not require any sort of username or student ID to access. This means that you could find lecture notes, homework, homework solutions and exam solutions to classes you've never taken at universities you've never been to. This allows you to experience almost any class you like outside of sitting down to take the exams. Some universities, UCSD included, have classrooms equipped with built in microphones and cameras to record lectures and post them on the Internet for students. Meant mostly for review purposes or for absent students, these are usually open to the public. MIT has gone as far as to encourage this initiative, through it's [|MIT OpenCourseWare] publication. This in and of itself is the epitome of "Many, Many Teachers," not to mention the fact that everything I've talked about so far enforces the idea of "24/7 Learning" since almost all of the information on the Internet is accessible at all times of the day.

Much of this information available on the Internet also applies outside of the classroom, helping people learn about things besides academia. There are hundreds if not thousands of "do-it-yourself" websites on the Internet dedicated to countless areas of expertise. Furthermore, the quality and complexity of these do-it-yourself guides has risen because of the Internet's ability to share video and diagrams. Household Hacker, a popular channel on youtube.com, hosts a video of [|How to Charge an iPod with an Onion]. Forums are also great places to find information, as they provoke much discussion between people knowledgeable in that area. [|StackOverflow] is a popular site related to computer science where anyone can come and post a computer science related question and get feedback from a wide variety of professionals in the field. This is another medium that maintains a high level quality of answers through a up/down vote system where users can choose who has the best answer to a question.

As a college student, I would say that I have experienced first hand this big shift more than the other 9. For almost any given assignment in any given class, I have utilized the information on the Internet for help, as I am certain most students have. There are many times where the textbook in conjunction with a professors lecture is not enough to completely understand a concept. In the past, the idea was to contact the professor or TA for a more in depth explanation, but I think more and more students are resorting to the Internet for answers. So much so, that some of my professors have even made rules against querying the Internet for help on certain assignments. Just because you're not copying off of someone in the class doesn't mean you're not taking credit for someone else's ideas. Cheating and plagiarism aside, the Internet is an incredible resource for a student, by offering an almost limitless amount of supplemental material for a class.

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