The Next “Big Thing”
March 1st, 2006 by Christopher HarrisA colleague of mine from a neighboring school library system asked me today to identify the next “big thing” after blogging. Now that is a pretty big question to have come up in a casual lunchtime conversation! I had to stop and think for a bit…what IS the next big thing? The next little thing(s) are easy: blogging begat podcasting which begat vodcasting/vlogging and are all connected by the now familiar one->many->many conversation strand. Wikis are a more distant cousin, but not all that much of a stretch from blogging in that it really just skips a step and facilitates instant many->many discussions. I pondered social bookmarking even though it has been a thing for a while but hasn’t really taken off in K-12 schools and libraries yet. Social bookmarking, when you get right down to it though, is just a form of miniaturized blogging about a single web resource – nothing “big” there. Certainly a working library automation system with an OPAC that meets the needs of all students Pre-K through 12th and teachers as well would be a BIG THING, but that wasn’t what she really meant.
She wanted to know, what was the next thing that was going to stop you dead with a spoonful of seafood bisque halfway to your mouth and say “oh.†I mention that only because it was the position I needed to quickly move out of as the polite time limit for thinking was drawly rapidly to a close. So I bit the bullet (well, the bisque at least) and committed myself to an answer. The next “big thing” after blogging in K-12 schools and libraries is Second Life. Well, not exactly Second Life, but that is a great place to go for some ideas and a proof of concept. Since we are talking K-12 here, maybe Teen Second Life would be a better choice, but we aren’t allowed to visit. So what is Second Life? Unlike many Web 2.0 tools, it is actually a pretty self-explanatory name. This is a second world; a virtual, digital space in which people can live, work, play, and interact through avatars. For a more game-like take on this concept, you might also want to check out Runescape. This is a very basic version of a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that happens to have a free version which makes it easy to try.
If you aren’t quite sold on this, check out a few articles on how another MMORPG seems to be replacing golf as the business social activity. I think it also has the potential to be the new educational social activity for distributed learning environments. I have written before about my experiences playing Americas Army, that propaganda recruiting tool thinly disguised as a game. In order to play a medic, one of my favorite character types, I had to sit through a couple of hours of first aid training delivered online in a virtual classroom with students sitting in desks watching a slide presentation on a virtual screen at the front of the room. As I noted, this was all offline and I was the only “live” person in the room. Replace the computer characters with other live students and the computer teacher with a live presenter and you have something cool going on! Actually, you have Lawrence Lessig’s groundbreaking Second Life presentation!
What do you think the next “big thing” will be?
March 2nd, 2006 at 4:44 pm
I don’t know if you saw it but Marshall Breeding had an interesting column on the Open Croquet Project in the Nov/Dec Computers in Libraries.
This all seems to suggest a major paradigm shift, from the web being about information to being about space. Perhaps that is even the way the younger generation already sees it (MySpace the obvious example).
March 2nd, 2006 at 5:22 pm
I’d have to say mash-ups. Remixing data from several sources to create something new has only just started. Frapper is a nice example. If something like unAPI catches on it will become very easy and only the imagination will limit the possibilities.
March 2nd, 2006 at 6:45 pm
I work at Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life. For more information, be sure to check out http://secondlife.com/education or feel free to contact me directly at pathfinder@lindenlab.com. I work with many educators interested in exploring how to use Second Life as part of their real-life curriculum, and focus on helping them find colleagues and collaborators. Here are some examples of classes currently underway: http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=88521
March 2nd, 2006 at 7:57 pm
Wow, Wordpress decided to suddenly cop an attitude about comments even though they got through spam karma okay. Sorry about that.
Fascinating ideas too! Mashups are critical, but I see them as the back-end tool that will let us create wonderful new things for users unless the next big thing is a simple build your own mash-up tool =)
Pathfinder, thanks for sharing. I will be checking this out more and hope to be in touch with you soon!
March 7th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
You know those links to “the new golf”? That’s been one of the main reasons I’ve been a little bit sparse on the entire blogging thing recently. I started in on these MMORPGs to learn a bit more about what you mention. By a freak encounter, I hooked up with this “We Know” guild mentioned in the article. (5 million active accounts, the first person I cooperated with was a member, we got to talking, I got in the guild, then found out what I got myself into!)
As for the next big thing? It’s somewhere between the blogging and these MMORPG’s. Blogging for the depth of content and conversation. Games for the social aspect, UI, and the wicked real-time collaboration tools available.
March 17th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Chris this information is good stuff. I think it would be great to have more staff development so we all can learn how to implement this tool in the educational setting. I think I will start blogging as soon as I find something interesting to explore.Thanks, EMG
March 17th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Chris this information is good stuff. I think it would be great to have more staff development so we all can learn how to implement this tool in the educational setting. I think I will start blogging as soon as I find something interesting to explore.Thanks, EMG
April 18th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
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May 2nd, 2006 at 11:31 am
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