The Digital Sandbox

As the 21^st century dawns, Americans are once again experiencing a profound and rapid shift–from an Industrial Age to an Information Age. American schools are experiencing what historians of the future will call the Third Industrial Revolution, a transition to a knowledge-based universal substrate of knowledge based linking of the internet to co-collaboration websites of the new Alexandrian libraries of the future. To secure the workplace of the future, young people will need the skills and knowledge base associated with Web 2.0 shared canvases, where every splash of paint provides a richer tapestry of knowledge. To succeed in education reform schools must be broadly driven by forward-thinking educational technology minded visionaries. These visionaries must articulate clear and compelling learner outcomes that articulate the optimal characteristics that encourage technology-supported education reform that focuses on preparing students to live, learn, and work in the 21st century.  

To ensure that students have a brighter future, educators must look at their traditional practices and expand beyond the status quo in order to kindle a spirit that unites all the stakeholders into a well designed Web 2.0 virtual learning schooling. By cultivating enriched technological environments for learning where teachers are given more opportunities to work together, a Virtual Learning Web 2.0 school establishes the confidence and trust needed for desired change. However, educational leaders must first understand the strategies involved in allowing stakeholders to gain confidence in technological advances to Web 2.0 Learning and contribute their ideas.  

Web 2.0 virtual learning schools are founded on a different set of standards than those schools founded on traditional practices. The Web 2.0 schools are places where both the professional educators, students, parents and the community are engaged in active learning based upon self-improvement goals. In the Virtual Learning School, the role of the educators is to seek out expanded technology based learning opportunities that benefit not only student learning but also the school as a whole and the improvement of the learning process. There are many factors that contribute to the Web 2.0 Virtual Learning School, but one of the major factors is the development of a successful technology plan that inspires people to share their knowledge, collaborate on their knowledge, and finally develop their knowledge into a technology paradigm shift for the future.   

The new Web 2.0 is different in its architecture for it now offers new applications where learners can share, create and contribute to new knowledge by direct participation rather than receiving passive information. True integration of technology into the learning process is a united effort among all constituents’ and educational leaders must layout a strategic plan for implementing technology into the school. These strategies should include the development of (1) Empowerment through an articulated vision to create a Virtual Web 2.0 learning opportunities for both teachers and students.  

To meet the challenge of the skills needed for the workforce of tomorrow, schools will need to realign their present visions by establishing new priorities that are linked to the new standards of co-creating environments in Web 2.0 collaborations. This does not mean that schools must change their beliefs; however, they must examine how their present beliefs support the challenges of required change. If schools are to be viewed as workforce providers of the future, then they must engage in strategic exploration of Web 2.0 potentials for the expansion of knowledge.  

It is true that making this paradigm shift from the industrial age to the information age during a time of uncertainty finds many a scholar not sure just how virtual learning will serve in the improvement of teaching and learning. For more than two centuries, schools have used printed paper materials, such as textbooks, to educate students. With the development of new technologies, virtual learning resources are reaching a limitless realm. Schools that are not presently tapping into these resources soon will find themselves left behind in their quest to improve the learning curve.  This is not to say that technology, alone, will educate today’s students. Technology is the tape measure in the toolbox that teachers can use to extend student learning opportunities. In order for schools to reach their vision for implementing school-based technology learning programs schools must be empowered to draw the pathways to get from the present to the future.  

Web 2.0 virtual learning cannot exist without a shared vision. Without a focus and commitment to some vision/goal that the schools truly want to achieve, the forces supporting the status quo can overwhelm the forces supporting meaningful change. With shared vision, the educators are more likely to expose their accustomed ways of thinking and redefine them in more coopera­tive and constructive terms, thereby recognizing personal and organizational short­comings. Thus, developing a collective vision for the future of the virtual learning school is the first strategy to a systematic design for successful paradigm shift into the future.  At its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question, “What do we want to create?” Just as personal visions are pictures or images people carry in their heads and hearts, so too are shared visions pictures that people throughout the school carry because it reflects their own personal vision. Therefore, shared visions create a sense of community that permeates the school and gives purpose and meaning to diverse activities. Shared vision is vital for the virtual learning school because it provides the focus and energy for learning. 

In many school organizations, intoxicating rhetoric about visions and noble intentions usually abounds, but without a strategy for communicating those ideas, nothing will be realized. Achieving success will require more than rhetoric; it will require the capacity to communicate a compelling image of a desired state of affairs – the kind of image that induces enthusiasm and commitment in others. 

How do schools communicate their vision and future goals? How do they then get their stakeholders aligned behind those goals? The answers to these questions can be obtained through the management of meaning – or the mastery of communication. To master meaning through communications schools of the future will need to design architecture for Web 2.0 learning environments for the expansion of structured exact knowledge outside of the normal classroom day. These newly designed Web 2.0 architectures will initiate all necessary points required for the planned implementation of methods addressing the issues of quality learning both at home and at school.  

The bottom line is this: The unassailable, standalone Website is out the door. So say hello to a Web that looks like a library that interacts and talks.