Learning 2.0 is a gimmick. I admit it, but it is just like Web 2.0. In social sciences we had modern, then post-modern...then what? Post-Modern 2.0? The web is so new in technological areas and cultural areas that I will allow it to be called Web 2.0. Effectively how old is the web? I sent my first email in college in 1993 (with a monochrome screen) and placed my first on-line order with LLBean in 1997. In the 12 years since we have apparently come a full cycle to a second generation, or at least its creation.
Learning has been around for millennia of millennia: 5000 years or so for creationists and hundreds of millions of years for evolutionists. Yes animals learn, remember the beginning of Kubrick’s 2001 a Space Odyssey? So learning is currently on wave 1739.0 or so, give or take.
I'm specifically taking using learning 2.0 on the basis of linking it with the technology currently developing around new web applications. Teaching institutions are rarely on the cutting edge of anything. Either we are bound by tradition of lack of funds. This is true for institutions at all levels. Wealthy colleges might have great facilities, but it still takes the innovation of the teacher/professor to use what is available to them. High school teachers are widely touted as poor and doing the best with what they have, but many do have computers, cell phones and the same access to information and the internet as many of their students. So why aren't we using it?
Learning 2.0 is about teachers and students’ using what is literally attached at their hips to learn. Getting away from painted cinderblock rooms and going anywhere else to learn, study and test. We are at the technological age, thanks to companies like Apple and Research in Motion, where nearly all the worlds’ information is at our fingertips. It is now up to us to learn how to use it for education and advanced learning.
