Places to Go: Robin Good's Master New Media

Abstract

e-Learning is moving beyond the domains of the learning management system. This shift is congruent with the idea that students, instead of being mere receivers of learning content, are active participants in the learning process, tasked as much with creativity as with consumption. Schools and universities are beginning to experiment with weblogs; London's Ravensbourne College has even organized its Web site using a wiki, thereby allowing collective authoring and updating of the site by different segments of the campus community. Educators will make much of this new approach to e-learning in the months to come, an approach that is sometimes called "e-learning 2.0, " which reflects the widely discussed "Web 2.0 " (MacManus and Porter, 2005). As RSS feeds have allowed designers to publish countless combinations of non-localized, aggregated, and cross-referenced content on their sites, Web 2.0 designates a whole array of associated trends and practices that have transformed our relationship with the Internet. Rather than being thought of as a medium, the Internet is now being thought of as something more akin to a computing platform; as a result, previous notions of what a Web site entails have quickly become outdated in light of the more dynamic and dispersed forms of online publishing currently available. However, as the foundations shift, where does the educator turn to stay abreast of developments in this rapidly changing environment? This issue's place to go