I would like to just start this post by saying that my blog looks amazing with Eminem wallpaper and the picture up top!

I just finished watching Gardner’s presentation and reading his essay. A lot of the things he said really interested me. He has a very thorough understanding of the web and how we can all the use it. The problem, as he sees it, is that we are not using the web as well as we could be. He uses a bag of gold to show how a new product or currency can scare people away. Where does one use gold? Can you go to WalMart and buy things with gold? When questions like these go unanswered, people are less likely to want a bag of gold. Rather than growing the web and teaching students how to use it, instead we underwent a digital facelift. The web became easier to use and teachers and students could interact online. These one stop applications added convenience and seemed to be the next step in the internet. The digital facelift can be seen in many places, newspapers became digital and books became digital forcing stores like Barnes ‘n Noble out of business. But the internet changed again and the medium became the message with sites like Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook. The personal cyber infrastructure is very interesting to me. Rather than giving a student a small share of a server to use, why not give the student his own domain and let him explore the web? I’m pretty sure thats what #ds106 is all about. Everyone needs to explore the world wide web and learn how to use it and learn how to make it their own. My favorite part of the presentation was when he said his favorite music was Jimmi Hendrix because he plays feedback. It took me a second to get, but feedback is important in the teaching process. Narrating, curating, and sharing are the tools he described to better a learning experience.

There should be no template for how to use the web.

Over and out,

PT