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Yes, both corporate trainers and professors absolutely have to address the implications and opportunities of Web 2.0

But the contexts and cultures of corporate training and higher education are so vastly different.

Tom Werner posted some ways they differ.

This review looks at a number of key factors important to growing successful online learning communities and provides some relevant strategies for this.

Source: Futurelab

Community building in online distance education is important to a successful learning experience because it alleviates feelings of isolation for both students and faculty members. Ruth E. Brown describes the process by which students become part of an online distance education community, identifying three stages: “making friends,” “community conferment,” and the development of “camaraderie” (Brown, 2001). The purpose of this article is to present concrete, specific, and practical pedagogical strategies to implement Ruth E. Brown’ 3-stage theory of community building in online distance learning courses.

Source: JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching

Blogs and podcasts are making their way into traditional college classrooms, changing the way students learn and professors teach.

Learning becomes more interactive and can take place in the middle of the night.

Professors said the new learning modes improve their ability to communicate with students and foster more interaction among students.

Source: Tucson Citizen

Random Mind attended a round table given by Bret Nelson of San Jacinto College at the 2007 Conference on Information Technology, on making a smooth transition to online teaching. Her post seems to have captured the essence of the round table.

Topics included:

- On the difference between teaching online and teaching face-to-face

- On developing your course

- Using discussion as a tool

- Strategies to help you cope

- Keeping the lines of communication open

The results of this study demonstrate the potential for Personal Learning Environments as a tool for Lifelong Learning, linked to communities of practice. Personal Learning Environments can extend access to educational technology to everyone wanting to organise their own learning. PLEs can include and bring together all learning, including informal learning, workplace learning, learning from the home, learning driven by problem solving and learning motivated by personal interest as well as learning through engagement in formal educational programmes.

Source: Pontydysgu - Bridge to Learning

You can present a lot of good information in your elearning courses, but you can’t really control whether or not a person learns from them. The learners own what they learn and much of it is determined by their level of motivation.

The good news is that while you can’t make a person learn, you can create an environment that is more conducive to learning

Source: The Rapid eLearning Blog

In addition to a counterintuitive organizational scheme, integrated commercial systems have a built-in pedagogy, evident in the easiest-to-use, most accessible features. The focus on presentation (written documents to read), complemented by basic “discussion” input from students, is based on traditional lecture, review, and test pedagogy. This orientation is very different from the development of knowledge through a constructivist, learner-centered, or inquiry-based approach, which a number of faculty use successfully in the classroom. In constructivist pedagogy, the instructor’s role is to provide a rich learning environment, which often includes extensive social interaction, self-assessment, and independent projects. These techniques are better supported by Web 2.0 applications or by learning management systems that encourage such pedagogy at the novice level. The more a CMS promotes traditional pedagogy, the more likely it will limit faculty creativity—and flexibility and creativity are the foundations of academic freedom and good teaching.

Source: EDUCAUSE Quarterly

I am using Twitter Charts to monitor statistics from my 2 Twitter accounts.

1- emapey stats, my Twitter networking activity with members of my College 2.0 Ning Network.

2- emapey2 stats, my Twitter networking activity with other educators.

These Twitter Stats show that nancito, enpatagoniasur and Sabridv are, so far, my Twitter best friends. I even used Twitter to teach nancito and enpatagoniasur how to use del.icio.us for networking, and with Sabridv, we all met in an online flashmeeting video conference to discuss Web 2.0 in Education

Other valuable Twitter friends, are so far, gsellart, murcha, n2teaching, NicolaA, bwatwood, AngelaMaiers.

I am grateful to them for offering to me their support and friendship via Twitter.