Future learning landscapes

Here’s an excellent article in the online journal Innovate that lays out some of the implications of social software for pedagogical innovation:

Eventually, teachers and administrators will have difficulty defending traditional pedagogies from the challenge of new perspectives toward learning. We believe that the concept of Pedagogy 2.0, inspired and underpinned by the knowledge-creation metaphor of learning and the theory of connectivism, signals a movement away from a teacher-centric pedagogy to one emphasizing learner-directed activity and content creation. This is of key significance in a postsecondary education climate where there is likely to be continued blending and merging of informal and formal learning, where the value of textbooks and prescribed content is already being questioned (Fink 2005), and where the open-source and open-content movements, exemplified by projects like MIT's OpenCourseWare and MERLOT, are finally being recognized, supported, and accepted (Beshears 2005). By capitalizing on personalization, participation, and content creation, existing and future Pedagogy 2.0 practices can result in educational experiences that are productive, engaging, and community based and that extend the learning landscape far beyond the boundaries of classrooms and educational institutions.