Education Technology has been built to be extremely interactive. As Shirky states in “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus” this is because we are “always looking for the mouse.” He goes more in depth to describe the story of a young girl who got up from the couch while watching TV to look for the mouse to control the show. The next generation of students have grown accustomed to interact and control their environments and any service that is lacking in this department must adapt, and fast.
Not only are these site being built as an extremely interactive experience, but they are accommodating the “always on” lifestyle of this generation. A majority of students today have cell phones. These phones enable them to have all of the information in the world simply at their fingertips. The way in which Education Technology contributes to this lifestyle is the way that they make videos that compliment that course material that students can watch from any device whether it be their laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.
Education Technology at home also take a turn for the social because many of these services offer piece of credibility. There is a very important Web 2.0 social aspect to this. “Web 2.0 describes web sites that use technology beyond the static pages of earlier web sites.” When students earn Badges, Points, Level Completions, etc. they are encouraged to share their progress to other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. The sites as I mentioned are extremely interactive and encourage content to be shared to other websites. Very innovative.
Book: Boyd, Danah. “Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle“, “The Social Media Reader”, Michael Mandiberg. New York University Press.
Book: O’Reilly, Timothy. “Web 2.0“, “The Social Media Reader”, Michael Mandiberg. New York University Press.
Book: Shirky, Clay. “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus“, “The Social Media Reader”, Michael Mandiberg. New York University Press.
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