Another snippet to add to the board memo for schools who have banned the Read/Write Web. My reading in brackets:
According to Kathy Harris, group vice-president and specialist in applications manager analysis at technology research firm Gartner, knowledge workers are picking up new technologies on their own faster than enterprises [schools] can begin to understand them.
Employees [Students] have been using a lot of technologies such as instant messaging and blogs in their jobs [personal lives], but businesses [schools] are only just starting to invest in these technologies to drive up productivity, she said.
Examples of such technologies include blogs, instant messaging and wikis, which allow individuals to create content for Web pages or online forums that are then edited by other like-minded users.
In particular, Gartner predicts that wikis–such as the popular Wikipedia online encyclopedia–should become commonplace in at least 50 percent of enterprises worldwide within the next four years.
Because tools such as instant messaging and blogs allow people [students] to share ideas and resolve issues [learn collaboratively] quickly, managers [schools] who fail to capitalize on this trend will risk [deny] valuable intellectual property [learning opportunities] created by employees [teachers and students], Harris said.
Nah…let’s let ’em learn that stuff in college…
The collaborative aspects of blogging and IM are indisputable. Students understand that intuitively.
What about their teachers. Will THEY get it?
Please point me to the board memo banning Read/Write Web. Unbelievable.
Rob Kennedy
Private Schools Guide
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