Education 3.0

Web 3.0

The world wide web is influencing education just as it is the rest of our culture (albeit much slower...), and a lot can be inferred (or hoped for) about the future of education by looking at the trajectory that the Web is on.  

The term and concept of Web 3.0 is a natural progression from the Web 2.0 term coined in 1999 by Darcy DiNucci and then made wildly popular by Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly of O'Rielly Media with the Web 2.0 Conference that was first held in 2004.  Web 2.0 took us from static content much like a library to a place where information was easily created by anyone and contributed to through Wikipedia, blogs and feedback in a myriad of forms.  Social media like MySpace and Facebook evolved to allow not just sharing of content and ideas, but connecting people with like interests.  Nova Spivack, founder of Radar Networks among other start ups defines Web 3.0 as a period of time (see image below) so as to eliminate the possibility of the term being co-opted and capitalized on.  His take on the direction of the web is the ability of a more personalized experience building on your browsing history, likes, dislikes as well as a Semantic Web where we are not merely able to search keywords in content on the web, but able to find content based on the meaning in that content. 

Knowmads and Invisible Learning

John Moravec, PhD is a scholar on the future of work and education and is the editor of the Knowmad Society project and co-director of the Invisible Learning Project.  He looks at the convergence of changes in the world of work, the advances of the World Wide Web and Education.  He created the following meme to help elucidate the changes in the Web and how they have changed or will change education.  This is a futurist view of how he sees that education must evolve to meet the changing world we live in and to do so by capitalizing on the technology that exists and is being created.

Education 3.0?

It is easy to see the potential for Web 3.0 applications in education.  Personalized searches of content that are based on past web activity applied to learning activities and tutorials would be a huge leap forward for what technology can do to help teachers differentiate learning. These advances are years down the road and Education is often one of the last arenas to adopt new technology so we can't rely on the technology to change schools.  Education 3.0 is achievable with today's technology. We simply must move away from the teacher centered, mass produced education system that defined the 20th Century if schools are to be relevant in today's economy. John Moravec presents a vision of schools and learning that is worth striving for regardless of the advances made in Web 3.0 technology.