CH9 Response: What Does It All Mean?

It means I'm really glad I took this class. I couldn't agree more with Richardson in his summation chapter. The classroom of the Read/Write web era is now, and will be defined by the major trends cited in the book:

• The internet will continue to explode as the most comprehensive source of information in history.
• More and more, the creation of internet content will be collaborative, a la wikipedia.
• And lastly, the world is indeed flat!

Access, speed, and the ability to publish and comment will make us all authors and collaborators - or owners in the read/write web. This means teachers become students and students become teachers.

The big shifts, as Richardson puts it, are worth paying attention to and embracing for understanding as we evolve.

• Open content - the world of closed and protected code is slowly evaporating
• Global access - our round world is made flat by the global connectivity of the internet and telecommunications
• Collaborative construction of knowledge - students can produce group work and share it with wide audiences
• Transparent dialogue - ideas start the dialogue rather than just being preached into the air
• Answer sources - it'll be more important to know where to find an answer than what the actual answer is.
• Editors - we're not just readers, we read, write, publish and edit.
• Portfolio work - the web is our notebook that will contain all of our work
• Composer - writing is not just text, but takes on numerous dimensions, including photography, music, and sound.
• Projects - it's easy to publish to the web versus just "taking a test"
• Finality - there is none. the goal is to contribute and evolve, not finish.

"We've only just begun..."