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An interesting report Web 2.0 in Schools.

Given that yesterday Canberra was engaged with, and streamed live, its Government 2.0 Forum and announced the establishment of the Government 2.0 Taskforce (http://gov2.net.au/)– this educational focus may also get some legs and coverage.

The twitterstream (#publicsphere) and live feed from Parliament (http://www.katelundy.com.au/live/) on Monday really highlighted that perhaps Habermas’s pessimism about the role of the internet in establishing a new Public Sphere may be misplaced. There was a wonderful interplay of public engagement with the forum. Many educators were participating in the exchange and some fantastic challenges were posed for the new task force… it remains to be seen whether the bureaucratic mindset will prevail or if this will become a different way of engaging the citizenry in governance. The next logical step for education is engaging the student population in defining their needs in the same sorts of arena.

Having said that – the discussion is already underway about “2010 Web” and “Web 3.0” and beyond – the report also highlights how we struggle with the new demands for timeliness and constant flu.

I suspect the emphasis needs to shift now to finding enabling policies that adapt and evolve organically rather than relying on bureaucratic, administrative and managerial protocols… the time-frames of institutional structures are counter-intuitive to the ethos of meaningful, real-life student-centred education…

But that argument will fall on deaf ears in some quarters I think.

I believe the material below came via Ken Price in another context.

Please see this report about social computing in schools:

http://www.educationau.edu.au/jahia/webdav/site/myjahiasite/shared/papers/SICTAS-nsi.pdf

This report comes from the Strategic ICT Advisory Service, funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.

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