Don't miss the train!

I'm just about to hop on a train and make my way up to Milton Keynes for the first time, where tomorrow I'm an external examiner for one of the Open University's PhD candidates. Before the train arrives, there's just enough time to write a brief review of an extraordinary book that has landed on my desk this week. It's another one of those overprices IGI Global books I'm afraid, but ignoring the cost for a minute, I want to concentrate on the contents.

The book, edited by Mark Lee and Catherine McLoughlin, both of whom I respect immensely, contains some timely and in many cases, leading edge research on the use of Web 2.0 tools in tertiary education. The book is simply and concisely entitled: Web 2.0-Based e-Learning and is aimed at those working in further and higher education. At almost 500 pages, it's a weighty tome, but the 21 chapters it contains (one of which is one of my own) blend together succinctly to provide the reader with a stimulating sequence of accounts, case studies and research reports from across the globe.

Understanding Web 2.0 and its implications for e-Learning by veteran researcher Tony Bates for example, proposes new design models for education and training to better prepare workers in a knowledge based economy. Tracing a history of educational technology from multi-media, through virtual worlds and digital games through to mobile learning and open content, Tony draws out well established learning theories and melds them together with emergent ideas to provide a well argued treatise on how e-learning in all its various forms is evolving.

Another stand out chapter for me, is written by a team from Estonia, and is entitled: Considering students' perspectives on Personal and Distributed Learning Environments in course design. The chapter traces how students represent the structure of their personal learning environments, and their distributed potential. They conclude that any valid course design should enhance social networking, advance self-direction, enable community and group formation, allow for a variety of assessment methods, and support social filtering and mashing up of feeds. The personal learning agenda is well and truly affirmed in this chapter.

One more chapter worthy of mention is phophetically entitled: When the future finally arrives: Web 2.0 becomes Web 3.0. Written by Matt Crosslin, the chapter caught my eye not only because of it's speculative nature (the jury is still out over what Web 3.0 will look like) but also the narrative style it is written in. Crosslin entertainingly paints a picture of what learning might look like 10 years in the future, where students have access to holographic, 3-D full gesture controlled applications, enabling them to learn in a time and location independent manner, collaboratively and flexibly.

I could go on, but my train is pulling into the station, and I really think I ought to get on. More later, when I have had more time to read the book.

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Don't miss the train! by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.