I'm learning how to use a variety of new Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, blogs, rss feeds, social bookmarking...the list seems to be growing everyday. Here are some recent examples that of the influence these tools are having in higher education
Using a Wiki to Collaborate on a Book
Check out the We Are Smarter Than Me site, "the first community-driven, networked book on business." Its focus is to help the business world understand the emergence of blogs, online communities, and other interactive Web media and their uses to the business enterprise.
However the really interesting part of this is that you (and a million others) are invited to participate in writing the book (it is a wiki after all): "Collaborate with authors from MIT, Wharton, and thousands of professionals from around the world. See your name in print when the book is published next fall by Pearson Publishing. "
In November "business professionals and scholars, including faculty, students, alumni, and newsletter recipients from two of the nation’s most prestigious graduate schools of business, the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania" recieved an invitation to collaborate on this book.
Visual Studies and Multimedia Scholarship
In my last blog entry I referred to growing definitions of what literacy means for today's students (and faculty.) We here the terms information literacy, media literacy, visual literacy, and technology literacy used frequently in higher education. The following are some odds and ends of resources addressing the need for becoming what I term, "digitally literate."
*Duke Receives $2.5 Million Mellon Grant for Visual Studies
Because "Visual studies was identified as an institutional priority in “Making a Difference,” Duke’s recently approved strategic plan," Duke received this grant which it will use to hire new faculty, create new courses, and provide undergraduates summer research opportunities, among other activities.
Hans van Miegroet, chair of Duke’s Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, stated in the news release that "many students are well educated in reading and writing but are not visually 'literate'.”
*Multimedia Scholarship for the 21st Centuryhttp://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp0509s.pdf
This short but incisive article from the Forum Futures 2005 publication which can be accessed from EDUCAUSE's Forum for the Future of Higher Education's site, The authors focuses on how faculty can pursue "multimedia scholarship and the use of it to transform, expand, and bridge academic research, pedagogy, and publication."
