Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Friesen, Norm. Education and the social web.

From today's PLENK2010 Ellmuniate session:
Friesen, Norm. Education and the social web. Connective Learning and the Commercial Imperative. http://learningspaces.org/n/papers/Social_Web_in_Education.pdf
Friesen points out that "that commercial social networks are much less
about circulating knowledge than they are about connecting users (“eyeballs”) with advertisers; it is not the autonomous individual learner, but collective corporate interests that occupy the centre of these networks." I'm really interested in this paper. There's a tendency to see Web 2.0 tools as free from corporate taint. Perhaps that was true of Web 2.0 tools at their inception, but commercialization has crept in. On the other hand... what is still great about these tools is that you don't have to wait for some committee at your university to decide what software to buy and then wait for some campus IT person to provide access! Just do it!

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