Pedagogy 2.0

At Moodle Moot Au 2010 Michael Sankey (University of Southern Queensland) talked about "Incorporating Web2.0, Pedagogy 2.0 and Moodle 2.0 into your learning and teaching agenda: But just wait one sec". This was a moderately useful presentation, despite the problematic title.

Web 2.0 is essentially a meaningless marketing term not a technical one. Michael seemed to be using it to refer to social networking. He pointed out some of the obvious problems with using third party social networking web sites in education. However, these are not new problems, being essentially the same as using any form of external forum for education.

Also I have difficulty with descriptions of teaching done at university as being "pedagogy". This is because it misses the essential point about university: the students are (mostly) adults, not children.

Michael described a future where everything is not in the LMS. This is much the same issue as with other online systems, where external tools can be used. Some content might be on a non-Moodle system, but still within the university system, other content on external public systems.

Michael mentioned the problem for some of the pedagogy being embedded in the content and not being able to shared publicly. I did not understand what the issue was, as if the same "open access" approach to education is take as with public funded research publishing, then there is no reason not to publish course material freely.

Michael pointed out that voice tools in Wimba has been most popular. I did not find this surprising, as voice is easier to get to work than video and provides most of the level of communication needed. Video adds little extra benefit, but considerably increases the technical complexity and cost.