Earlier this week, I gave a talk/presentation to our Heads of Departments (Faculties) on ICT and schools. I built upon some previous talks I have given on this theme (anyone devoted to these PowerPoints will find some of the slides familiar), but took things further, looking more closely at what underlies some Web 2.0 sites and at the main areas where schools now need to be focusing their thoughts and efforts. The talk was given on the Tuesday evening; in the morning I'd heard Demos give a presentation at the ISC conference (see previous post), and I adapted some of their conclusions in my summing up at the end of my talk.
My slides are available here (pdf) — from S3, itself a sign of the times. We're experimenting with student podcasting, running off S3. I am very interested in the possibilities for rapid enactment of an idea that S3 gives us, let alone the prospect of a near-future where schools contract out at least some of their server needs.
Many slides have active links, by the way: do click through and follow the threads. The fundamental metaphor I keep coming back to in all this work is still that of the conversation. I quote David Weinberger in one of the slides: 'The Internet as a technology teaches us one value more deeply than any other: the joy of being connected'. To be connected is to be in conversation.
