Chapter Nine- The Wrap Up

Chapter Nine was interesting. It was summed up in the chapter title, " What it all Means." The book covered a lot of ground as did the class in very little time. I have learned a lot of things regarding the power and potential of tools available on the Internet. Chapter Nine gives us the two trends that help to sum up the entire book:
1- more and more items will be available on line
2- more and more of the content is being collaborated on.

To me, it is mind blowing that Google is going to digitize 50,000,000 books (Richardson 2009). That is awful lot of information that will be a simple mouse click away. It goes to show how far we have come in such a short period of time.

Chapter Nine also got into the big shifts of the Read/Write Web:
1- Open Content- basically, the teacher is not the final authority any longer. There is too much information from too many sources.
2- Many Teachers, and 24/7 Learning- The actual school day may end at 3:00pm but the opportunity to learn never ends. In addition, there are many more sources available for learning.
3- Social, Collaborative Construction of Meaningful Knowledge- No longer are students isolated in their own studies, the web allows collaboration from down the street to around the world.
4- Teaching is a conversation- This concept opens everyone up to imput from different sources. The days of lecture may be behind us because of the openness teaching is more of a conversation.
5- Know "Where" Learning- The text books days as the end all be all of information is coming to an end. Information can be found a few clicks away.
6- Readers Are No Longer Just Readers- Reading has gone from a passive experience to an active one. The Web has become a printing press for the masses.
7- Web as Notebook- Could paper be becoming a thing of the past. The Internet is becoming more oof a source for both teaching and learning
8- Writing Is No Longer Limited To Text- The Read/Write Web allows us to be the authors and authorities.
9- Mastery Is The Product- Test may no longer be a sign of mastery. Being able to use the product may be.
10- Contribution Not Completion- Everyone collaborating or contribution to make a body of knowledge greater. It may never be completed but continues to grow every single day.

Of the Shifts listed above, I find #9 to be the most interesting and it reminds me of something my Finance Professor told class many years ago: "It wont do me any good to tell you to memorize all these formulas, besides, in the real world, you would look the formulas up. However, you must know how to use the formulas. " This was in the early 1990's, before everyone had a computer. He knew that the mastery was in the product. A little foretelling of the Read/Write Web.