I have this running belief that the best way to garner attention, and maybe even get rich and famous, is to slap a 2.0 next to something you have interest in and run off to market it.

Honestly, Health 2.0, Politics 2.0, Life 2.0, Music 2.0, (fill in the blank) 2.0, and Web 2.0 - yes, the 2.0 craze culprit! It really is enough to make a person's head spin especially educators and educational stakeholders where it seems to be out of control: student 2.0, (subject-matter) 2.0, School 2.0, Teacher 2.0, Administrator 2.0, Classroom 2.0, and Learning 2.0 (and is that 2.O or 2.zero - someone help me out with this).

Puzzle Makers

So, with my head spinning, I've been trying to put this whole educational 2.0 puzzle together so that I can find the best way to introduce these to educators, administrators, and parents are in a way that is inviting not discouraging? In other words, how do we focus on the big picture of learning not on the technology or the latest 2.0 terminology?

The key to the puzzle is the ultimate target of education: learning. After all, we should be looking beyond the scope of the tools as defined under web 2.0 and looking to shape pedagogical practices to ensure that the focus is on the learning. In the world of educational technology, this means the concept of Learning 2.0 including the 21st Century Skills.

However, Learning 2.0 will never reach a point of mass acceptance unless administrators are fully supportive and set it as the target. In other words, Learning 2.0 must be embedded into the culture of the school and this takes leadership defined by Adminstrator 2.0. If not, Learning 2.0 will be random at best, strictly an anomaly.

Each teacher has a number of tools and practices at their disposal: web 1.0 box, web 2.0 box, and traditional practices box. While many of these tools and teaching practices can hit the Learning 2.0 target, the box best capable of hitting the target efficiently and effectively on a routine basis is the classroom 2.0 box as it mashes best practices with current technology including web 2.0 to create a transformative learning environment. When this occurs, the teacher is no longer using web 2.0 for technology sake. They have transformed their teaching (teacher 2.0) and have fostered a learning environment (classroom 2.0) that is best able to reach this generation of students (student 2.0) and the Learning 2.0 target.

Hmm... but what about all the puzzle pieces for Biology 2.0, English 2.0, Math 2.0 and those odd pieces that have 3.0 attached?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the point here and it is not about putting the the puzzle together but admiring all of its pieces. Maybe we only need to focus on Web 2.0. However, if it was just as simple as starting a blog, using a wiki, playing video games, and getting students on the web every day to use an assortment of new and great web 2.0 tools, wouldn't we be doing it?

Trend Setters

I guess we could really be trend setters and stop using 2.0 all together and just focus on what we want students to learn, how will we know they learned it, and what will we do if they don't. After all, the ultimate goal, the big target, is quite simply learning not what concept we can slap next to 2.0 but then what fun would that be for us? ?

By Ryan Bretag
From TechLearning.com