Monday, June 25, 2007

Read/Write Web features two must-read posts on Education 2.0...

This past weekend Read/Write Web, my favorite Web 2.0 review blog, had two feature articles on the current and future state of the Education 2.0 market. The most useful of the two was under the title Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students and included brief introductions to the many new Web 2.0 applications that could be useful in helping students organize, share and develop a greater understanding of information.

As a recent college graduate I can attest to the poor utilization of eLearning environments in 21st century University education, with the prevailing market leader Blackboard the most pathetic excuse for Web 2.0 among the entire Education 2.0 market. As the most popular web-based software solution, Blackboard has taken a Microsoft-styled approach to innovation, which is strictly proprietary and profit-driven in nature. To compensate for their lack of innovative capacity, they have tried to lock-out the competition and have largely been successful because of the ignorant eLearning management practices at the Administrative level.

The second excellent piece featured on R/WW was eLearning 2.0: all you need to know, which similarly provides a broad wrap-up of the emerging technologies in the eLearning 2.0 market, and provides the basis for understanding how to integrate technology effectively in an organization focused on building Web Apps aimed at the education sphere.

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