Hello, world!

Welcome to Joel's Blog #1!

This blog has been created as a part of the course ED6114, which I am currently taking. Today was the first day, and we discussed ways in which Web 2.0 technologies could be used within tertiary education.

Students in 2010 are exposed to different sorts of information, presented in different ways, to how I was only a decade ago. Teachers therefore need to keep up with these formats if they want to continue engaging students.

There are both positives and negatives out of these changes. On the negative side, there is the very real fear that new methods of communication inhibit thought - particularly sustained critical thinking - and can also affect what students get out of their university experience (or life!) in general. Conversely, in some ways these methods of information dispersal do (or at least can) more closely align with how people actually think & learn - long lectures in which one person talks at a room full of other people are generally boring for most of us, and discourage deep engagement on the part of the audience.

Thus, teachers need to find ways to use new technologies to engage the attention and imagination of students, without falling prey to the shortcomings that can go along with such technologies.

In my next post, I'll explain exactly how that can be done.

(Just kidding!)