Publishing (1.0) vs Creating (2.0)

IÂ’ve been doing some thinking lately about some of the mind sets we have to help teachers get past in order to move into the 2.0 world. One thing thatÂ’s been on my mind lately is the way computers were used 10 years ago and the way they could/should be used today.

10 years ago technology in schools was mainly for publishing finished pieces of work. You did the writing process on paper, and as a bonus you were able to publish it on the computer. Or you did the outline by hand and then typed it up in Word to hand it in. Education used technology as a publishing tool; we didnÂ’t spend a lot of time creating work/information with technology, we werwe busy just trying to learn to publish with it.

I think this is part of the mind set that needs to change in education. It has taken us many years to get technology to a point where teachers were using it to publish student work, and about the time teachers were getting comfortable with that concept, the Internet and 2.0 tools changed everything. Students donÂ’t want to just publish information, they want to create it, interact with it, and be apart of the Information Age.

Our 8th graders have electronic word processors at their disposal, which is good for publishing information, but the students feel they limit them to the extent that they would rather not use them. Our 8th graders would rather wait until they get home to do their work where they can create/edit/revise/publish/save all in one step on a computer then typing on a word processor, and then transferring the document to the computer to finish the rest of the process. Besides, when youÂ’re on the computer you can be creating your document the same time as you are IMing your friends, downloading the newest song, and commenting to your friends blog.

Maybe this is a way to get teachers into the 2.0 world, showing them the difference between publishing with technology and creating information with it.