I have put a computer into almost every room in the house as well as bought a laptop for the sole purpose of being able to learn almost anything on the spot, but more importantly so can my family. I want my children to embrace this technology and not only that but to know how amazing it is to posses the power of knowledge through self-education.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Education with Web 2.0
As I was finishing up the original post I had in place here, my browser crashed and I had to of course start all over again. In between post I decided to investigate the problem of why Firefox has been crashing lately, well after a little research come to find out it was one of my addons used to track World of Warcraft server status. So with that in mind I answered the question at hand, Web 2.0 has affected my education, in that it allows me to educate myself. Whether I am looking for cooking tips or watching Dr. Michio Kaku: Three types of Extraterrestrial Civilizations on YouTube, I am constantly teaching myself new things with Web 2.0. My wife takes online classes and sometimes I find myself watching her online lectures with her, as she does the same with mine, none of this would be possible without Web 2.0. My car's air conditioning compressor locked up and was causing the serpentine belt to break, through a website I learned how to bypass the compressor with a shorter belt and end up saving $900 in the process. I have fixed my furnace, computer, car, oven, washer and dryer all using the Web.
I have put a computer into almost every room in the house as well as bought a laptop for the sole purpose of being able to learn almost anything on the spot, but more importantly so can my family. I want my children to embrace this technology and not only that but to know how amazing it is to posses the power of knowledge through self-education.
I have put a computer into almost every room in the house as well as bought a laptop for the sole purpose of being able to learn almost anything on the spot, but more importantly so can my family. I want my children to embrace this technology and not only that but to know how amazing it is to posses the power of knowledge through self-education.
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5 comments:
Great post!
How awesome is it to experience something unknown with your spouse in your home and for free! Web 1.0 had the ability to teach groups, but it was entirely textual and still somewhat individualized. Actually, having grown up in Web 1.0 and being a 25-30 year old in a world of Web 2.0, I can't say the web was used at all as an official "source" during its Web 1.0 childhood. In high school I can't recall if we were allowed to use it in a Works Cited, and if we did, any information from a dot com was immediately discarded.
I think I'm starting to write for my main entry...I digress.
Your point, however, about the air conditioning in your car, furnace, oven, etc. is nothing short of amazing. Personally, I wouldn't know anything about Photoshop, I wouldn't have any alternative recipes, I wouldn't know how to can produce, and I definitely would have been miserable during my first year of teaching without the web.
To say that we are or we will be co-dependent on the web is somewhat of an understatement. I wonder how much practical knowledge I've learned form the Internet versus what I pick up from day to day in the physical world.
"I wonder how much practical knowledge I've learned form the Internet versus what I pick up from day to day in the physical world."
This is a very good wonderment,to me it seems that experience is the best teacher, although I learned how to bypass my ac compressor from the web it took a bit of messing with in the physical world to get my head around it.
I gotcha. But experimenting can only get you so far. I may understand how to put something together based on trial and error, but knowing why I'm doing it, how tightly I need to make a bolt, or why it broke in the first place can become expensive when guessing. I think I'm straying from your point though. Absolutely. It's one thing to be told how to do it. It's another to practice. We learn best by doing.
My husband watches the lectures with me as well, he says they always seem to catch his interest. I too embrace technology and want my kids to know all of the positive things that it brings to the world and how it has helped in so many ways.
My sister in law could probably pass the final for this class having watched almost all of the lectures with me. This is a testament to the production value of the lectures in this class as much as it is a testament to the content I think though.
I too have watched many tutorials online and learned probably more than I should know because of Web 2.0. It is without question a revolution of knowledge and power and a shift in the way we think and learn.
-Zack
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