Umm…I looked through the courses and didn’t see a one on anthropology or ethnography in general nor one on kinship analysis or even one on social network analysis. I’m just really looking at the what is being offered here and it seems to fall short of preparing one technically to design and or manage a social network and it seems to fall short of providing one the “deep reading” capabilities required to critical analyze and “read” social networks…oh thanks to the poster who dismissed most of the social sciences or really any qualitative methodology as mere “anecdotal understanding”…

So even if this degree is offered by an institution that is fully immersed in a regime that seeks to repress the ability to gain socially valuable credentials except thru their doors…isn’t the degree itself as currently constructed, rather a badly designed mishmash which offers to provide neither a skill set for building or analyzing social networks?

It isnt a degree in social computing but very much an example of how you can use a higher education course to help students (preservice teachers) make sense of all they are learning (both in and out of class) through a school of the future lens. Much like in the day of Socrates — it helps to have a critical friend there modeling and asking hard questions for self- reflection.

There are two key points here that I would agree with wholeheartedly.

Firstly just because some people use Web 2.0 tools a lot doesn’t mean that they can leverage the full potential for learning out of those tools. Even the appropriate use of Web 2.0 tools is very patchy in my experience. Working online in a community where one aim is the critical evaluation of those tools, as well as abstracting or chunking up to get to the essential meaning is invaluable.

Also having others to ask the ‘hard questions’, provoke criticism and reflection is invaluable.

[Disclosure: Other than an English degree, I lack the proper credentials to comment on what follows. Onward!] Another fascinating imbroglio going down recently over at Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed, this time on a host of issues surrounding the Univers…

I have recently written an article regarding Wiki Technology and Human Capital. In the future, credentials will not matter as much as knowledge, and published content. The permutations of wiki and blog networks is expanding at an exponential rate.

What will the Universities look like in 5 years? The University landscape is going to change. The professional training center technology will be vastly different in 5 years. You tube, and other self publishing technology will enpower the educator, professor or subject matter expert to be their own training center, radio host, etc. and the list goes on!

See the Article-Freedom of Human Capital-The Power of Internet Wiki

http://educators.pbwiki.com/Freedom%20of%20Human%20Capital-The%20Power%20of%20Internet%20Wiki%20

Yeah… I am in my PhD program right now too. I have presented on the research I mentioned a couple of times too at national conferences– last one AACTE in NY. However, the journal has been reviewing the article for 9 months. (It is a top journal and tough to get in– but we havent even been turned down yet) Like you, this isnt my dissertation either– it is a project I helped write a grant for and led year one implementation and research (wrote the article) and am now overseeing year two implementation of the project. (if you are interested in knowing more… Click Here

However, my point wasnt about the PhD programs– my point was that with the trend toward self-publishing, citizen journalism, and the immediate feedback available in the blogosphere– the turn around time in peer reviewed journals was going to have to improve, especially at the rate technology and information is changing.

I definitely see your point about using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with “experts” – our major problem here is that some of the experts don’t understand the tools of Web 2.0. Most of our professors at least try – and with our (my cohort) encouragement, they end up pretty successful. Who’s teaching who here?

Will, I think you’ve really gotten some good discussion going on here – 40+ replies and climbing!

The real value of a formal educational process is that all too often “we don’t know what we don’t know”–and so without a systematic structured approach to a complex topic we run the very real risk of not seeing the big picture, and falling into the trap of generalizing from our anecdotal experience.