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Some may ask why create a new term, Web of Learning instead of just Web. Why get fancy? As indicated in Preface, phrase Web of Learning is a means to place more emphasis on what is educationally available online as opposed to focusing solely on technologies that make it possible to electronically and systematically share contents and resources. This naming is intended to remind educational professionals, policy makers and government officials, software developers, those connected with media, and casual as well professional learners, that goals and objectives of Web, or any educational tool or resource, are ultimately human learning and development. Web of Learning metaphor can help one see that there is a growing need to design frameworks, models, and guidelines that clarify and perhaps simplify online learning and education possibilities. Simply put, there is a pressing need to change dialogue related to online learning from repeated overhyping of emerging technologies, to thoughtful use of such technologies with innovative and exciting pedagogy. Web of Learning shifts attention from our perpetual engrossment with emerging technologies or some nifty tool or specific feature, to what is educationally available and possible. Instead of focusing on a shiny, new technology, we must continue to ask how it might be used to inspire distraught and disenfranchised youth to learn. How might these new devices help those who are less fortunate or who are not participating to fullest extent in society? With Web of Learning metaphor or ideal, diverse talents of twenty-first century can be harnessed and united for mammoth educational change. With such harnessing, educational possibilities that no one had conspired to build previously can come into view. And ultimately more innovative, engaging, and exciting instructional events will unfold, instead of dull and lifeless ones that have pervaded for centuries. If you are an educational professional or involved in learning in some way, you have likely browsed Web of Learning and searched for educational tools, resources, or activities that were pertinent to your courses, learners, and particular society or culture. You might have used these resources to create an entirely new course experience or module. You might have built online components for a course or educational activity that is taught face-to-face. Or perhaps you supplemented a learning experience that relied on videoconferencing, television, radio, outdoor education, correspondence, or some combination of such approaches. In effect, you found that Web of Learning can be course, an extension of it, or supplemental to it. And if learning pathways streaming from your course are freshly paved, you may sit impatiently awaiting exciting news and feedback from travelers to online experiences they have encountered. |
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Most of the World is Open learning is effortful and, at times, painful. At same time, when you have choice in your learning pursuits and those presented to you are highly interactive and engaging, it can be one of most gratifying experiences known to humankind. Web of Learning can be exactly that. And, remember, is it less than two decades old. Stated another way, it is but a child. As World is Open matures, it will bring more learning pleasures and experiences; some of which we can at least dream about today, but much that lies far beyond our field of dreams. We are entering a learning culture. A new epoch for our species and World is Open.