While I’m a bit late on the Jenkins/Convergence Culture scene, several ideas noted in Jenkins’ text have leapt out at me that I wanted to consider in greater detail as it relates to the teaching, learning, and computing.
As more and more Internet applications enter the market allowing consumers/users to engage “old media” (e.g., books, newspapers, television, etc.), the Read/Write Web is readily framed as a “vehicle for collective problem solving, public deliberation, and grassroots creativity” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 169).
What many of us focused on teaching, learning, and computing are currently experiencing is a certain tension between top-down structures (“school”) and bottom-up forces (“learners”) that ultimately requires us to begin rethinking what the future of education should look like.
Throughout Jenkins’ work, participation is the key ingredient in the mix. Educators and educational researchers have described this similarly over the years in terms of constructing a “student-centered” or “learner-centered” approach to teaching and learning as opposed to a teacher-centered approach.
And like the tension surrounding the integration of new media with the old, this learner-centric/participatory concept has been surrounded by conflicting expectations from administrators and teachers who hold close to a more prescriptive/prohibitionist stance and those who subscribe to a collaborationist stance that seeks to empower learners in ways heretofore considered rare or experimental.
Clearly, the closer we examine these two positions, the more complicated they become. As such, many scholars and writers argue that we are in a period of transition where one educational paradigm is being nudged out by another. While this premise can be argued ad infinitum, the Read/Write Web is indeed gaining a foothold in educational circles and will continue to challenge the ways in which learners learn and teachers teach.
To quote Jenkins directly, “None of us really knows how to live in this era of media convergence, collective intelligence, and participatory culture. These changes are producing anxieties and uncertainties, even panic, as people imagine a world without gatekeepers…” (p. 170). I love it: a world sans gatekeepers! Can you imagine? [Indeed, this leads to a host of governance and equity issues that deserves more attention.]
Any early adopter of educational technology can easily agree with Jenkins’ assertion above. We are looking at a new way of thinking and engaging one another that does not map easily onto the conventional forms of teaching and learning as we know it. There is no consensus on how to work this thing, no right answers, no way to tell what far reaching effects this new media will have.
Jenkins frames this struggle in terms of what it means to be “literate” in this era of the Read/Write Web. In other words, who has the right to participate and on what grounds? Who has a voice and what rights do learners/speakers really have given current institutional constraints? Who determines how we educate our young thus determining how we shape our collective future?
Are you feeling it yet? The anxiety, the perturbation?
The Read/Write Web stands at the cultural and educational crossroads. New media like weblogs, wikis, online social networks, virtual worlds, et al., are enabling participation in ways never before dreamed. We have expanded our ability to pool our collective intelligence, collaborate, share and compare value systems, make connections across scattered bits of information, express our interpretations and feelings toward news, entertainment, popular culture, our daily professional practices, and circulate our creations that can be shared with others. Yet this may only be the tip of the iceberg.
What makes all of this all the more striking is, as noted above, that these processes enabled by the Read/Write Web are mostly beyond any direct control. As long as current educational policies constrain the ability for learners to tap into their passions, the more valuable the Read/Write Web becomes. “Affinity spaces” like fan sites or even the edublog’sphere itself offer tremendous opportunities for teaching, learning, and understanding that are sustainable precisely because people can participate in so many different ways regardless of age, class, gender, race or educational level. Learning in these spaces is based on peer-to-peer interactions, it’s based on intrinsic motivations of individuals wanting to know more, of wanting to build or refine their skills. And again, we’ve only just begun….
The reality is, we will probably remain in a state of transition and transformation for some time. The uncertainties surrounding the convergence of old and new approaches to teaching, learning, literacy, and participation empowered by technology will continue to challenge us on many cultural fronts. When asked what I feel about this state, my response is generally “Embrace the confusion!” I believe, like Jenkins and others, that those who fail to “make peace” with the affordances of the Read/Write Web will face a relatively shallow existence in a world that will always be defined by our level of participation.
I read somewhere that the future depends on what we do in the present. So, early adopters, keep rocking the boat! Eventually, all your hard work will pay off.
Reference: Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.
Speaking of piling it higher and deeper, here’s a video demo from Bump Top for a 3D desktop computing interface that utilizes pen-centric techniques to manipulate documents.
The metaphors for navigating and organizing files in this demonstration really tickle my fancy. To wit, manipulation techniques include: Tidy Piles, Pigtail Gestures, Drag n’Cross, Dwell and Scrub, and Exploding Piles, to name but a few. There are also leafing widgets, messy/tidy widgets, and techniques that allow the user to crease, fold, and crumple documents or pin them to the wall.
While technology makes our lives easier and more efficient in many ways, often times it seems to make things more difficult. To wit: I have a remote control for my stereo, my t.v., my digital video recorder, my dvd player; I even have one that came with my digital camera. Each of these devices also came with a user guide presented in six different languages, none of which clearly explains how to accomplish that one particular thing that I want the device to do.
This “spiral of complexity,” also known as feature creep (a cousin of mission creep, but only remotely related to super creep or astro creep), not only costs users time, it also costs businesses money. A recent article in The New Yorker (28 May 2007) talks about how product returns in the U.S. alone cost around one hundred billion dollars a year. It turns out that people are returning products not because they are defective, but because consumers simply could not figure out how to use them. Author James Surowiecki willfully asks:
Companies now know a great deal about problems of usability and consumer behavior, so why is it that feature creep proves unstoppable?
Surowiecki goes on to note a major factor associated with this creepy phenomena -- The internal-audience problem. Often times what designers and engineers think is important, consumers do not. In other words, options engineers think are valuable or more powerful are often deemed unimportant or useless by Joe Sixpack. (I am reminded of this everytime I pick up my mobile phone. I didn’t ask for a camera with my phone, but my choice of mobile devices that carried the features I did want left me with a camera that I have only used once.)
Engineers are the not the ones to notice that these additional options are making devices less useable. Production costs are not deeply impacted by additional features, plus sales and marketing units now have an additional selling point to attract customers with. Another great example of feature creep can be found in your copy of Microsoft Word. According to Surowiecki, Word 2003 had thirty-one toolbars and more than fifteen hundred commands. How many do you use? Fifteen? Thirty? Five?
Here’s where things get tricky. What do consumers really want? A loaded question, no doubt. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland revealed that when consumers where given a choice of three models of a particular digital device varying in complexity, more than sixty percent chose the more complex device, i.e., the device with the most features. When these same subjects were able to customize this device to their own specifications, given a set of twenty five possible features, the average number of features added was twenty five. However, when asked to use this device, the users reportedly became frustrated with the number of options they chose.
The Simple Life
This study and others repeatedly show consumers are not good at predicting what will make them happy in the future. As such, consumers end up paying more for more features that, in the end, they overestimate actually using. Researchers from Duke University and the University of Michigan found that when buying things like golf balls and digital cameras, consumers overestimate their skill or ability level and thus purchase products that are, for all intents and purposes, “unsuitable.” As a result, consumers are again willing to pay more for additional options and will feel “shortchanged” if they do not receive them. However, once consumers own the product, their reported patience quickly runs out. A researcher at Phillips Electronics found that Americans who returned a product out of frustration only spent on average twenty minutes with it before throwing in the towel.
So, product manufacturers face a dilemma: create a digital device with too many features and risk annoying customers or create a device with too few features and risk not capturing our attention. Savvy users will always demand more choice. So does a company risk alienating less savvy users or do they cater to the more elite users?
I am also reminded of this same feature creep issue whenever I consider evaluating learning management systems and social/collaborative softwares. In terms of learning management systems, my uni spent quite a bit of time arguing over which features where necessary and which were simple nice to have. In the end, we purchased a product that was feature-rich, yet completely underutilized by a majority of users. My own college opted to take a different route with a more friendly, customizable solution and are quite happy we did.
iThink ergo iAm
Perhaps the key is somewhere in the middle. Think Apple’s iPod or the computer printer market (with different products for different skill levels). Theoretically, the better choice might be to pack in a lot of power and utility into a simple design. This is what Apple is hoping they have accomplished with the iPhone – a device with a notable range of features and a clean interface that, in theory, is easy to operate (even when you smudge the touch screen up with greasy fingers).
Time will soon tell whether Apple got it right. The truth is no one will be surprised if they fail. The bottom line is, even when product manufacturers give people what they want, consumers can still damn them for it. As David Byrne once said, “There’s less irony then there used to be. I’m sure that will disappoint some people.”
References:
Larrick, R. P., Burson, K. A., & Soll, J. B. (2007). Social comparison and confidence: When thinking you’re better than average predicts overconfidence (and when it does not). Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102: 76-94.
Before anybody gets too excited about the revolutionary shifts in education being ushered in on the wings of convergent media and the Read/Write Web (see George Siemens’ June 22, 2007 post on Restructuring Education), let’s take a brief look at what the pace setters are doing.
By pace setters, I’m referring to higher education institutions, to colleges and universities. As noted much more elegantly by Ken Robinson, John Seely Brown (pdf), and others, most school systems are set up to make academic professors of us all (perish the thought!). Middle and secondary schools are set up to physically and academically resemble colleges--curriculum is built around fifty minute chunks; academic seat-time is measured in quarters or semesters; grades are used to mark mastery, content is delivered only to be absorbed and repeated, etc.
The trouble is, no matter how revolutionary secondary curriculum and participation is, if one stays on track he/she will run smack into the walls of the ivory tower and will be transported back to a medieval system where the major justification for doing what is done is based on tradition: “I had to do it this way, thus so do you.”
Often times the only place anybody gets to have any fun is in between class mussing about with friends. My two sons see/saw school as a social arena where friends are/were the main attraction. Participation is often associated with recreation not “learning.” The real promise high school provides young adults is an opportunity to do well enough to postpone adulthood four or five more years i.e., by enrolling in college (see “party schools”).
The more I think about it, the more I come to see universities as the last place to change what they do. Academics are mostly a reactionary, turf-protective bunch that really don’t like change. When I give talks and demonstrations to colleagues in higher education re: the power of the Read/Write Web, I often feel like Plato’s allegorical friend who shows others that they are looking at shadows on the cave wall and not what’s really going on outside. They laugh and tut-tut and a few approach me when no one is looking (usually via email) and ask if I could come over and show them more in the privacy of their office or home.
A revolution means some will win and some will lose. Until higher education moves towards a much more open, flexible structure empowered by a participatory mantra, young adults will be the losers. But not completely, of course. They can still use their engineering degree to build massive, multi-user bongs, write cheat codes that allow them to maximize their characters virtual attributes and sustain their longevity on cybernetic fields of play. They will be Twittering, Facebooking , and YouTubing and having a grand time while their professors debate the validity of elearning and wrestle with the transitions in their powerpoint slides….
[Note: This is probably one of the most cynical posts I’ve authored. And while I try to stick to my idealistic tendencies I do apologize to those fighting the good fight. I am simply starting to feel a bit more skeptical with age. Perhaps my colleagues and NECC 2007 will boost my morale!]
BTW, having a wonderful time at NECC2007. I have met so many great people/spirits it's hard to know where to begin.... I will follow up soon with a more detailed reflection. Stay tuned....
Framing questions: [I]s there anyone interested in taking an hour to discuss the creation of a short list of talking points regarding the uses of the Read/Write Web in education? What key points should we be making? What key points CAN we be making? To whom should we be making them? What questions do we need to have answers for? How can we best package all of that? I know this sounds like the beginnings of a marketing campaign, but it might be worth a try...or not.
So, how do you talk about the Read/Write Web to people with little or no experience with it? Perhaps a better question might be “why would you want to do this?”
How Scared Are We of The Future?
Within this session, we talked about the fear factor and how many politicians and media outlets generally respond quickly (and not always wisely) to those things that threaten our collective values and way(s) of life. If it bleeds, it leads; yet, no one is bleeding from using the Internet in the classroom. Internet safety is one item that gets people’s attention, and perhaps a clear message can be brought forward about the need to inform parents and kids about the potential hazards that lurk in cyberspace (e.g., bullying, sexual promiscuity, pedophilia, illegal file sharing, etc.). Here I worry how that message will be crafted as well as kowtowing to the baser aspects of our social fears. Personally, I believe we should focus instead on building a case for promoting digital literacies wherein one component of this new form of literacy is knowing how to respond to information or people who seem suspect. Digital literacy could be said to be a combination of social and informational skills that schools can help learners to develop. They involve learning how to respect one another; how to behave ethically in a variety of contexts; how to meaningfully analyze and interpret data presented from a number of sources; and learning how to communicate knowledge using a veritable cornucopia of tools and media.
So Why is the Read/Write Web Important to Educators?
Here is how many participants at EdubloggerCon2007 responded to the question, “How has blogging made a difference to you personally?”
“It’s given me a place to vent, learn from others, and make connections.”
“It's made me more thoughtful, improved my writing skills; it's helped me meet more people.”
“It has helped me be more reflective about my teaching practices”
“Connecting me with other people who do what I do
“[It has] allowed me to connect with students in a very different way than in the past...lets me see what they are really thinking.”
“Blogging has defined my personal and professional expression of ideas, community, friendships and the world.”
“[Blogging has] re-engaged my passion for writing and communicating.”
Key Points
For many educators who are actively engaged in the blogging process, weblogs have reportedly transformed the way they learn; it has challenged them about the ways they think about themselves individually, as well as the way they think about teaching and learning.
For many educators at this meet-up, blogging extends their ability to connect to other people and ideas, enhancing both personal and professional relationships. Weblogging has reportedly challenged them to learn more about themselves as well as challenging the way we think about a variety of subjects.
In terms of professional development, educational bloggers in attendance are reporting how blogging expands their professional networks:
“It's helped me meet more people. It's helped me share interesting things with my teachers at my school. Reading blogs has certainly made me smarter.”
“[It has] helped me explore new opportunities that I am developing passions for.”
“It has allowed me to share information with a lot more people than ever before.”
“It has allowed me to grow and extend myself in ways I didn't know were possible.”
“[Blogging has allowed me to] learn more in last two years than in the last 10 from all the connections I've made.”
“[I] can call on a personal learning network anytime and anyplace. You can network with people wanting to make [c]hange.”
The Read/Write has allowed a number of educators to extend, expand, and accelerate their knowledge. Is this something we would like to see students in our classrooms doing?
A handful of the educators in attendance spoke of how blogging has permitted them to be “[m]ore willing to advocate for radical change in education” (participant’s emphasis).
This last item is one of the key take-aways I am hearing from attendees: Many educators are not satisfied being bound by uniformed administrators and legislated mandates. Many agree that accountability is critical, but to what end? Who are teachers accountable to? What are they accountable for?
Many educators in attendance at this session recognize that parents are key constituents in mobilizing schools and school districts toward adopting Read/Write literacies in classrooms. Parents are a political force that, when organized, can strongly advocate for the concerns that teachers identify and clearly articulate. While politicians can be another voice for change, they are reactive by nature responding to the perceived needs of their constituents. Perhaps if parents are kept well informed by teachers who can show the value of the Read/Write Web, politicians can be persuaded to advocate for those ideas through their various channels and connections.
Barack and Hillary: Are You Listening?
Given the political nature of education, clearly there is no simple way to go about promoting change when the belief that the change will do us all good is only held by a small minority. Clearly more work needs to be done to begin shifting the focus on No Child Left Behind to creating an informed, participatory 21st century citizenry.
Jenkins' text on convergence culture shows how new media can be used to organize political action on a number of social fronts wherein its potential has been lightly tested. If educators feel compelled to organize for change, to push for the adoption of Read/Write technologies and literacies within schools, perhaps the best place to start is locally. Crafting the vision and message will be dependant on those most likely to be impacted by such a vision, therefore, I’m not sure getting change to happen on a national scale is a good place to start.
This session gave us all plenty to consider. What say you?
Well, as much as I think this would be a cool thing to have, I couldn't resist posting this image from The Onion.
One of the major downside's to this device is its carrier restrictions, i.e., AT&T. For many of my friends, AT&T/Cingular are the worst mobile phone service providers they have ever experienced. Perhaps the next iterations of the iPhone will allow users more service options (assuming there will be many iterations of this snappy device).
Sometimes when I think of the new product releases from Apple, I am reminded of the Newton. Yet given the track record and success of the iPod, perhaps this device will deliver on its promises. Then again, we'll all have to wait and see!
What i find difficult about new media that it is overrun with information. All kinds of information. I[t] might be difficult for educators or the user to make a selection of information on its own. Yes i find the web a great database to educate yourself and by that others. But i see the web as a brain, we, you, all of us using only 10% of the entire web database to learn, educate and for leisure.
How you guys feeling about that?
To think of the Web as a metaphor for the human brain seems like a logical step. It is an idea many people can clearly grasp. However, I am willing to bet we know more about the Web than we know about our brains.
A cognitivist perspective, that is, one that believes that mental functions can be explained via experimentation and applied scientific method, tends to look at the world in terms of reducing quanta to meaningful chunks that have an explanation. A romantic notion, no?
While I see a place for such a stance, this perspective often brushes aside what Heidegger calls being in the world, that is, the personal meanings one gleans through experience. The idea that mental functions can be described through information processing models has been openly criticized for years and becomes all the more sticky when we introduce notions of language and cultural relevance.
Nonetheless, figuring out how to tap the Web’s infinite informational resources meaningfully is a wonderful dilemma for educators and non-educators alike. In this sense, the Web is more like a super-library with tomes and tomes of texts of various shapes, sizes, and perspectives.
I must admit, I have always loved going to the library. As a child I remember this sense of power I felt when I was taught how to use the card catalog. If I could imagine it, I could browse through dozens of 3 X 5 cards cataloging subjects and authors and book titles designed to draw my attention. Then, with the proper code scribbled on a scrap of paper, I would head to the stacks of books where my initial quest would be constantly diverted by hundreds of other choices. God I loved it!
So, while the Web started as a virtual media repository/shopping centre, it has become enhanced by the opportunity to not only browse but to engage and participate with other people like sellers, writers, family, friends, etc.
I have often heard of the brain described as a neural network. This image is easily transferred to the notion of the World Wide Web as a collection of nodes connected by an invisible tissue of binary code. Yet, I think such a metaphor still lacks telling the whole story. The Web is not like a human brain because the human brain (and its accompanying transporter) has situativity, it has context and culture, it has heredity and social capital. Thus such a metaphor reduces the complexity in a manner that fails to capture both the human brain and the Web’s dynamic grandeur.
The 10% Factor
I have always been suspect of the easily bandied mythology that suggests that we, as humans, only use ten percent of our brain. Research has since proven otherwise, yet, very few people seem to bother to check this out.
Similarly, I believe that the suggestion that collectively we are only tapping into ten percent of Web also rings false. But to make this argument more interesting, let’s try this brief thought experiment (which, by the way, is my attempt to be absolutely reductionist): Given the diversity of human interest, let’s say I only explore ten percent of the Web that catches my fancy. My neighbor, who has completely different interests, explores a different ten percent. My neighbor across the street explores yet another ten percent, and so on and so on. Even with a certain amount of overlapping interest, over a relatively brief amount of time (given the millions of Web surfers) I am willing to bet that collectively, we are tapping into nearly ninety-nine percent of the Web. We also might consider that particular persons create the content that fills the Web at a particular time, thus somebody is tapping into the reaches that many of us are completely unawares.
Interestingly, this line of reasoning brings me back to my humble library. As I grew older, I began thinking of the library differently. As I strolled through the stacks, I began to feel sad for all the books that never seemed to receive any attention. I imagined these books to be written with care. I imagined the author’s life and the blood, sweat, and tears that he or she might have poured into their work; the hours and days of agonizing over syntax or the arrangement of ideas, trying so hard to get everything just right. Then there are the editors, typesetters, bookbinders, and the myriad of people whose lives touched this text both directly and indirectly. And here this book sits, sandwiched in between hundreds of others, and nobody is paying it any attention. The library then served as a museum or worse, a morgue or cemetery, where people’s ideas go to rest in peace.
So perhaps, this is where the notion of ten percent seems credible, that is, the historical nature of information is often left aside as new and perhaps more interesting/relevant ideas surge to the fore. As such we can only pay attention to a small percent that washes over us, leaving say, ninety percent ignored.
So, to get back to the initial question framed by Smackie: how are we, as educators, supposed to teach children and adults how to sort through the beautiful tangle of media and information housed on the Web? Perhaps the best place to start is to consider your own interests, to find what excites you and begin working your way through the stacks until you find something that fires your senses.
As an educator I believe it is incumbent upon us all to teach and model skills that provide individuals the ability to question authorities, to understand the responsibility we have towards each other, and to be able to articulate and synthesize what we learn in ways that are open, honest, and allow for debate and revision. This approach is not new, nor is it unique. New media allows us to have this very discussion where anyone with access, interest, and intention can chime in (the issue of access is a whole other topic for discussion, no?).
For me, while I enjoy closure on many levels, I recognize that the concept is human and ultimately bound to disappoint. I have found that looking for answers often leads me to more questions, thus learning is this never-ending process that I try to model for others.
So, to quote one of my favorite existential philosophers, Woody Allen, retelling a great cosmic joke:
“Could it not be simply that we are alone and aimless, doomed to wander in an indifferent universe, with no hope of salvation, nor any prospect except misery, death, and the empty reality of eternal nothing?”
The uncle replies, “You wonder why you’re not invited to more parties.”
Twitter is all about trivial examples. It's the stuff of no importance whatsoever that make us feel nice about being human.
Twittergrams, tweets, twitterbugs… they all have such a light, fluffy, almost confectionary tone about them. But is Twittertrivial? Is it the pet rock of 2007? Is feeling human unimportant? Hmmm…
The twitter craze razed through NECC2007 providing plenty of grist for educators to grind (almost as much as Second Life).
Being an educator who enjoys thought exercises, I found myself pondering the potential of Twitter in educational settings. I found that I was not alone in this regard and was happy to see a similar message from Barbara Ganley cross my twitterrific transom: “Who else is playing around with Twitter in their classes? Ideas?”
After a brief email (read: old-school) exchange, I thought I would toss out a few ideas that we kicked around.
Writing/Microblogging/Reader Response
Barbara writes: I like Twitter for its asynchronous, forced concision and can see my students this fall, in a course on writing in the 21st century, exploring collaborative writing (line by line, if you will--Twitter poetry, I suppose) as well as sharing and editing titles and concise thesis statements (for old-school academic writing).
I also want to explore students using tweets to send out questions and observations to the group while engaged in the "solo work" of the course--the reading and ruminating and writing that so often happens alone. How might sending links and notes this way deepen and broaden our learning experience together?
Twitter’s 140-character limit provides a great framework for creating compact messages. Not that there’s anything wrong with being verbose; yet having taught writing, there’s much to be said for getting straight to the point. I’m not talking about using Twitter to write an equivalent of Joyce’s Ulysses, yet I think we’ve yet to really explore the potential of microblogging in formal and informal settings.
Imagine Twitter Haiku Jams, short story fests, writing workshops, or even six word lesson plans.
Collaboration/Project Management
At first I was using Twitter as a way to see what my favorite online personalities were up to. At the NECC conference, we used it as a way to organize, give quick updates, and rapidly point to resources (urls, etc). While in several cases, a mobile phone number would have made life a bit less complicated, the potential send links and pertinent info to a large scope of people is intriguing.
I can see using Twitter as a means for students to do the same: to organize ideas, reflect, send notes, and manage meet-ups.
Again, this is not to say these tasks cannot be done with existing tools/web resources, yet indulge me: I’m still in brainstorming mode.
A solution in search of a problem?
Perhaps Twitter will remain trivial, a minor celebrity enjoying its fifteen minutes of fame. But like most things, I believe it involves what you make it.
Finally, here’s a few resources I culled that might be useful to kickstart our collective thinking about using Twitter. I’ll eventually port them over to a wiki page. Until then, let me know your thoughts.
As more and more Internet applications enter the market allowing consumers/users to engage “old media” (e.g., books, newspapers, television, etc.), the Read/Write Web is readily framed as a “vehicle for collective problem solving, public deliberation, and grassroots creativity” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 169). 
Clearly, the closer we examine these two positions, the more complicated they become. As such, many scholars and writers argue that we are in a period of transition where one educational paradigm is being nudged out by another. While this premise can be argued ad infinitum, the Read/Write Web is indeed gaining a foothold in educational circles and will continue to challenge the ways in which learners learn and teachers teach.
The Read/Write Web stands at the cultural and educational crossroads. New media like weblogs, wikis, online social networks, virtual worlds, et al., are enabling participation in ways never before dreamed. We have expanded our ability to pool our collective intelligence, collaborate, share and compare value systems, make connections across scattered bits of information, express our interpretations and feelings toward news, entertainment, popular culture, our daily professional practices, and circulate our creations that can be shared with others. Yet this may only be the tip of the iceberg.
The reality is, we will probably remain in a state of transition and transformation for some time. The uncertainties surrounding the convergence of old and new approaches to teaching, learning, literacy, and participation empowered by technology will continue to challenge us on many cultural fronts. When asked what I feel about this state, my response is generally “Embrace the confusion!” I believe, like Jenkins and others, that those who fail to “make peace” with the affordances of the Read/Write Web will face a relatively shallow existence in a world that will always be defined by our level of participation. 
This “spiral of complexity,” also known as feature creep (a cousin of 
Here’s where things get tricky. What do consumers really want? A loaded question, no doubt. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland revealed that when consumers where given a choice of three models of a particular digital device varying in complexity, more than sixty percent chose the more complex device, i.e., the device with the most features. When these same subjects were able to customize this device to their own specifications, given a set of twenty five possible features, the average number of features added was twenty five. However, when asked to use this device, the users reportedly became frustrated with the number of options they chose.
So, product manufacturers face a dilemma: create a digital device with too many features and risk annoying customers or create a device with too few features and risk not capturing our attention. Savvy users will always demand more choice. So does a company risk alienating less savvy users or do they cater to the more elite users?
By pace setters, I’m referring to higher education institutions, to colleges and universities. As noted much more elegantly by 
The more I think about it, the more I come to see universities as the last place to change what they do. Academics are mostly a reactionary, turf-protective bunch that really don’t like change. When I give talks and demonstrations to colleagues in higher education re: the power of the Read/Write Web, I often feel like Plato’s 
How Scared Are We of The Future?
In terms of professional development, educational bloggers in attendance are reporting how blogging expands their professional networks:
To think of the Web as a metaphor for the human brain seems like a logical step. It is an idea many people can clearly grasp. However, I am willing to bet we know more about the Web than we know about our brains. 
I must admit, I have always loved going to the library. As a child I remember this sense of power I felt when I was taught how to use the card catalog. If I could imagine it, I could browse through dozens of 3 X 5 cards cataloging subjects and authors and book titles designed to draw my attention. Then, with the proper code scribbled on a scrap of paper, I would head to the stacks of books where my initial quest would be constantly diverted by hundreds of other choices. God I loved it!
Similarly, I believe that the suggestion that collectively we are only tapping into ten percent of Web also rings false. But to make this argument more interesting, let’s try this brief thought experiment (which, by the way, is my attempt to be absolutely reductionist): Given the diversity of human interest, let’s say I only explore ten percent of the Web that catches my fancy. My neighbor, who has completely different interests, explores a different ten percent. My neighbor across the street explores yet another ten percent, and so on and so on. Even with a certain amount of overlapping interest, over a relatively brief amount of time (given the millions of Web surfers) I am willing to bet that collectively, we are tapping into nearly ninety-nine percent of the Web. We also might consider that particular persons create the content that fills the Web at a particular time, thus somebody is tapping into the reaches that many of us are completely unawares.
As an educator I believe it is incumbent upon us all to teach and model skills that provide individuals the ability to question authorities, to understand the responsibility we have towards each other, and to be able to articulate and synthesize what we learn in ways that are open, honest, and allow for debate and revision. This approach is not new, nor is it unique. New media allows us to have this very discussion where anyone with access, interest, and intention can chime in (the issue of access is a whole other topic for discussion, no?). 
Twittergrams, tweets, twitterbugs… they all have such a light, fluffy, almost confectionary tone about them. But is 
A solution in search of a problem?
