Browsing about through one of my Blue Dot friend’s additions, I read through an interesting article listing some education 2.0 sites. One of them is called stud.icio.us a site tied in with Facebook that provides a place to share notes with fellow students. The site makes good use of AJAX and is in the process of transitioning to its own v2. I played a round with the beta site and found it intriguing. It automatically matches you with classmates and provides a means to manage your assignment dates and other such deadlines. It offers places to share material beyond notes and obviously will set off some alarm bells for educators as to room for abuse.
- Will students stop attending class and rely on notetakers to carry them through?
- Will material beyond notes such as essay outlines and potentially full essays be available for use?
- Are these all bad things?
- Would they happen through other means anyway?
- Does simply making sharing in an electronic format make abuse happen?
- How does this make things any different from professors making lecture notes available?
- What about Podcasts?
I have to admit I find the collaborative possibilities rife with potential and equally prone to abuse by those looking for the easy way out. Perhaps one of the better aspects of this rather public approach is just that…it is public.