Thing #5 - 2.0migosh!

After reading this wide-eyed article and this fairly-opaque one, I realize that Web 2.0 is causing a lot of wonder and a lot of fear.

So, to me, "School 2.0" means (and stick with me; it's an endearing metaphor, really!)...

...total and complete information frappé. Seriously. Let's take every person's knowledge and throw it into a blender. Put bytes of fruit in, and watch it get chopped into bits of information that look nothing like what they went in as. What goes in there, anyway? Do we know if it's healthy? Is it served to sustain Life or Second Life? Are the "facts" still there in chunks, or have they been annihilated by the blades of interactivity? Make it hard to tell who is who and what is what (and, for that matter, when is when and where is where). Blur the lines between fact and opinion. Let all the participants contribute to the flavor.

But. At the very end of it, this smooth, creamy blend tastes really, really good. I know kids who would rather have a banana-strawberry smoothie than eat a banana and 5 strawberries. This smooth, digestible information might be the way we sneak in the nutrition.

For schools of the future, this means that kids, faced with this blurry future of blended interactivity, will need to be taught how to find the truth that's out there. How to discern if what they're drinking has nutrition, as it were. Can they tell that there's a teaspoon of malt in the mocha? It's a challenge to stay ahead of the game, to keep track, as teachers, of what goes into the blender, but that'll be what we teach the students, no matter how little we ourselves know about the Nutrition Facts.

I mean, Nutrition Opinions.