Emerging Technologies for Learning

This new publication from Becta is good reading for those wanting to get to grips with the implications of social software in an educational context. You can even have your say or review the say of others.

As a sample ... this from 'Emerging trends in social softwaref or education' by Lee Bryant, Headshift

'IT functions in schools, just as in small businesses,
must focus on providing underpinning services and
infrastructure rather than seeking to control how people
use them. This means more diversity of software
and hardware rather than top-down standardisation
decisions that lock users into tools that are out-dated
by the time they are implemented. Interoperability
does not require central control, as the proliferation
of RSS and microformats have proved. Maintaining a
sensible degree of external security is fine, as long as
this does not stop people from doing the basics, such
as consuming web services or linking with the outside
world. But inside the network, experimentation and
innovation should be encouraged. Anything less runs
the risk of turning educational IT into an irrelevant
backwater that is far below the expectations of young
people that they simply do their learning elsewhere.'