"We are all learners and teachers." Is technology blurring the boundary between the two?

Про веб 2.0 и вузы, стираются ли границы между студентами и преподавателями - http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/4152.

"A teacher piloting social media is not likely to need a course designer and/or an ICT centralized support service: social media are easy and ready-to-use. However, it is necessary not to forget that social media are mere components in a complex digital landscapes, as Grainne Conole shows us. In a university to date the digital landscape has been dominated by the institutional VLEs (or LMSs), that usually support teaching practices more than learning needs and personalizations. So, on the one hand the gained ‘autonomy’ of teachers using ICTs can create potential conflicts beween early adopters and centralized support services; on the other hand no wonder that faculty mainly use LMSs.

In fact, the individual adoption of social media implies a shift attitude: as Dave White suggested with his metaphor ‘digital residents/visitors’, social media should be intended more as “spaces to inhabit” that mere tools to be selected in a tool box, when they are needed for a specific purpose. This produces a new, subtle and deeper digital divide, that can affect both teachers and students and can’t be overcome merely by a technical training.

Of course also one’s own teaching approach and epistemological position influence the way we apply social media in teaching practice: Twitter can be used as a broadcasting medium and a wiki can be used as a mere means to publish a syllabus, if the implied teaching approach is trasmissive. On the other hand a successful learning experience using Twitter to foster discussion and manage teamworking is likely to be successful if knowledge production and collaborative knowledge building are the basis of the teaching approach, beyond the technology being used.

In addition, faculty have always seen ICTs either as tools to enhance existing practices in teaching or as instruments to innovate teaching and learning (OECD, 2009). This is a key issue referring to social media, because these tools embed “powerful ideas” as architecture of participation, user-generated content, openness, etc. Faculty who are open to intend ICTs as instruments of innovation are more likely to fully embrace social media and harness its enabling power to give control and responsibility to students.

However, for Tony Bates (Bates, 2005) one of the embedded risk in the fast adoption of Web 2.0 tools is just to increase the “Lone Ranger” attitude in teachers who operate as self-taught designers of short-term and impromptu experiences. Bates often underlines in his blog the need of faculty training as a pre-condition in the incorporation of ICT-enhanced teaching and learning in higher education. Beyond the brave pioneers, it is up to institutional committment to define long-term strategies and provide support and guidance to facilitate the innovation of the traditional higher education asset" (Antonella Esposito).