Why should teachers and librarians bother to become involved in social networking outlets?
Technologies and trends come and go. (Any one remember BETA video?) We are invested learning new things, and we’ve outlived what turned out to be transitional technologies and in many cases passing fads.
So why should educators who work with children jump on the electronic bandwagon now by establishing accounts with Facebook, Wikis, Blogging, YouTube, Twitter, Second Life, Vodpod, and so on? If they are the current fad, won’t it be over soon and moved on to something else?
Most likely. This is the nature of automated technology, the newest thing, often is outdated within 6 months. Certainly, in the case of specific communities and software applications. However, we should get involved nonetheless.
In a David Letterman style, below are five top reasons for getting involved (invested?) in current tech trends . perhaps it will amount to only learning the basics about it and then only trying it once.
5. It is helpful to build your confidence to learn something new and experiment. Feed off of your own success!
4. Some of these fads are likely to “stick” in one way or another. Or at the very least elements of what we have learned today will live on in new incarnations tommorrow. When that happens, we’ll be ready to integrate these elements more effectively because we’re already familiar with them.
3. You will build a knowledge base and transferable skills to be used when the next “thing” comes around. It will be much easier to learn a completely new technology when it arrives if you already have a skill set developed and in place to use another interface. (Reiterating point # 5 …build confidence.)
2. You can engage in intelligent conversations with other professionals about the trends in the fields of education and information management.
and most importantly…..
1. Ideas often come from unexpected places… and people. The “next big thing” in your library or school just might be born out of your involvement in what are otherwise passing trends.
From an April 2007 Wiredbiz web article, Tim O’Reilly: Web 2.0 is about controlling data:
At the heart of the discussion is this quote from Tim O’Reilly:One of the big changes at the heart of web 2.0 is the shift from the creation of software artifacts, which is what the PC revolution was about, to the creation of software services. These are services that ultimately, if they are successful, will require competencies of operation, of scale, and the like.
O’reilly also speaks about 2.0 as being about the control of data, not the interfaces, by saying:
We’re still trying to move people toward really understanding what that new world looks like. I don’t think a lot of people are there. A lot of people still think, “Oh, it’s about social networking. It’s about blogging. It’s about wikis.” I think it’s about the data that’s created by those mechanisms, and the businesses that that data will make possible.
This is the challenge for librarians and educator libraries to attempt to adapt to a 2.0 world.
When we talk about the challenges of implementing this current technology labelled Web 2.0 ,then consideration needs to be given to what we are really struggling to deal with. Is it the emergence of new technologies or is it really the uses to which the technologies are put and the way we define, use, and control information?
Something to ponder on.
