Full Circle Associates

Oh, yummy! My post on the Second Wave is stimulating some conversations that are getting me all pleasantly worked up. I started to comment on them on people's blogs, but felt a need to pul some of my thoughts together, thus this post copying some of the comments here.

Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~

Nancy White is looking at the question of whether people are adopting Web 2.0 tools in learning. I can't imagine that they're not, but then again, I am one of those "smart, innovative people who are coming up with really wonderful uses of new internet based technologies" and not one of the people putting these tools into practice (I assume I can get away with that self-designation here). But again: it is not so relevant whether instructors use these tools nor whether or not they are used in the classroom; what matters is that students are using them, in or out of the classroom. And again: why is the focus in our discussions always on the instructor? The world could end - and it would not matter unless it impacted teaching practices. See also this link, also from Nancy White.
[Tags: Web Logs, Web 2.0]

My response:

Hm. Are the discussions focused on the instructor? That is a good question. My sense is what I'm wrestling with is with the participant - be that in a classroom our out to the farthest, unseeable boundaries of the network. The actor. The player in the cosmic play of life (which for me means learning!)

Second wave adoption right now has a particular bend to it. We have those born into the networked age and those who saw it form up. Once we get past us oldies, the dynamics of second wave adoption will shift again, until there is another jump in things, like the jump we experiened with the www. I suppose it is cyclic and someone with a good sense of history should be able to speak to that.

As a practitioner, the thing I run in to all the time is the rub between the amazing early adopters (and those of us just a step or two behind) and those who are watching them (or who are being preached to, and I'm afraid we're all guilty of that at some level.) There is a comprehension gap.

For example, in the non profit/NGO world where these tools to support horizontal learning and doing can be SO USEFUL, we run into mindsets that are grounded in vertical organizations. We need ways to talk about this, to see the possibilities as the two find a way to live together in this transition: to deal creatively with the tensions of change.

The reason this is important, and prkobably why talkng with teachers and others is that like it or not, they represent a form of power. They are not the ONLY audience, nor are they the primary audience for many of us. But to ignore them is to ignore them at our own peril.

Change is systemic. The catalysts may come from one corner or the other, but by "bringing the whole system into the room" we may have a more creative and generative way of moving forward together.

Later I found this post by Alex Ragone on Changing Teachers. I smiled.

OK, steppling lighlty back off my soap box, Beth Kanter expands on Second wave adoption and the idea of the Participatory Nonprofit. Beth grounds it back in practice in a particular setting which I find really useful. First, it's useful because adoption patterns vary depending on context and motivation. A non profit's motivation for change may be quite different than a third grade classroom. David Wilcox amplifies this practice-based reflection looking at the civil society sector, with lots of links and examples worth mining. (Note David's clever blog post titles!)

Michele Martin left a great comment on my original post that merits pulling up to the top level here:

To my mind, we are dealing with issues of culture and awareness more than anything. The revolution in Web 2.0 technology is not just about the tools. It's about the utterly different way of thinking about the world and what you do.

Beth calls it the "participatory nonprofit" and I think that's a good name for what we're talking about here. Many organizations still exist within a command and control, closed communication loop. Their institutional practices and relationships to stakeholders are built on this model. But Web 2.0 breaks that wide open, expecting a focus on process, on transparency, collaboration and openness that is simply not a part of the daily culture of many, many organizations.

On a very practical level, I think the other problem is that outside of the technical community, users don't "get" what the technology can do for them. They need to see it in a real, concrete way. I'm not even sure that some examples of best practices will do--in my experiences with training nonprofit staff, until you can sit them down in front of a computer, take their personal issues and information and show them how Web 2.0 interacts with that, they will not really get it. Their brains are "in the weeds" as one of my friends says, so standing back from that can be really difficult.

For me, you're getting to the heart of a question that's been on my mind for a while. How to take what is useful and valuable about all of this and help people realize how they can benefit. I'm curious to see where everyone lands and the ideas that come out of this discussion.

Oh dear. I posted this without finishing it. Umm.. uh... well, it is out there! This edit added at 8:09pm PST. Ooops.

More URLs to follow up on : http://lazygal.blogspot.com/
http://selfexplanatory.net/2006/11/07/the-path-of-most-resistance/
http://wilfredrubens.typepad.com/wilfred_rubens_weblog/2006/11/brede_adoptie_v.html (in Dutch).
http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2006/11/facilitating-adoption-of-web-20-tools.html
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2006/11/second_wave_ado.html
http://www.podnosh.com/blog/2006/11/08/second-wave-adoption-let-me-catch-up-first/