Enzo Silva blog » Web 2.0

Watch Le Web Live December 10 2009

enzofsilva — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:29:25 +0000

About Le Web:

“The real time web is taking the world by storm! Twitter has grown exponentially in one year with an extremely simple service that does only one thing: keep you in touch with what your friends are doing, in real time. Facebook entirely redesigned its most important assets, its home page and opened its feed to third parties. Given the growth of the Twitter and Facebook ecosystems with thousands of applications and new uses, startups as well all major players are adapting their services to compete in this environment. There was the static web, the social web and now here comes a new web: the real-time web.”

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

Learner vs Participant

enzofsilva — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:36:16 +0000

The term learner bears a sense of a passive individual that is merely a receptacle for Instruction and information. In light of this assumption, one would presume that another word or another view of the “learning as a process” to take place. Most everyone has some to contribute to this process and, aside from situations in which individuals need instruction for imediate information, for more long-term knowledge retention learning needs to be views not only as a process but as a participatory process. Even if an individual will go through “instruction” alone, ideally, the learning process starts then and continues as this individual partakes in conversations, formal and informal situations in which that knowledge is applied, learners new nuances to that information from others, funds new applications for that information as s/he collaborated with other “learners” (please read all you can about Constructivist epistemology and some applied theories such as social learning).
Therfore, if learning is an ongoing participatory process, maybe those in the field of Education should see the learners as “participants” in learning constantly together. Not that this is a call for a different word, bit for the view that consructivists have had for a while and that now social media makes it easier to achieve by creating participatory environments.

Digital Divide 2.0

enzofsilva — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:32:21 +0000

Everyone is talking about Web 2.0 and how everyone has a voice, even I have suggested that in blog posts, company training designs and school work (yes I am a graduate student wishing he were a Doctor already).

Something that has been bothering me though is the fact that “all this” technology does not seem to be available to everyone, really. I am not talking about a matter of having access to Facebook and choosing not to use it. What I am suggesting is the reality of “not everyone actually has access to these ‘amazing’ collaborative technologies” as they should.

This makes educational efforts that rely on Read/Write Web tools (even though there aren’t that many such initiatives) some sort of elitist efforts.

Some initiatives like the One Laptop Per Child project try to take technology to third world countries. The Brazilian government partnered with computer manufacturers to create a more accessible PC for the people called “Computador Popular” (or “People PC”) which gave my mother, 65, the opportunity to have her first computer which we use to stay in touch now. But it is still not enough. Not enough.

I pose this more as a question. How can we make collaborative Read/Write Web tools really accessible to more people(s) in the world, especially the under-privileged? Better yet, how can we make educational initiatives that use those technologies available to more people in the world? How can we make educators aware of the possibilities of such tools for Education (after granting them access to computers)?

Brian Benzinger’s blog series on Web 2.0 beign used in class

enzofsilva — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:51:29 +0000

Brian’s list of great Web 2.0 resources and excellent examples of how they can can add a flavor and simplicity to learning experiences is a must read.