Education and Technology:
Serendip's Experiences 1994-2004

Here we try to build off of lessons learned to date. Below is a brief outline of "Background and Theory", which informs a list of "Practices" with links to specific examples and some analysis. Our hope is not only to provide things that might be useful to other educators but to encourage other educators to join us in further exploration of how the web can contribute to deeper, richer, and more available education.

Inherent in this effort is a belief that the web, by encouraging innovation in a number of directions of particular promise in an educational context, provides an environment in which ideas about education can evolve and be tested for subsequent use not only in the web context but in educational environments of all kinds.

Share Your Experiences

Please join us in helping to think about education using the prism of the web as a starting point. Your comments and additions can be posted directly in an on-line forum area or emailed to us. Special arrangements for inclusion of materials from particular classes or groups can readily be made by contacting us.

Reflections by Other Educators

A section for more extensive reflections by others who have been doing their own exploring in the education and technology realm (see directory for contributions to date). If you are interested in and willing to contribute to this section, please contact us.

How We Use the Web: Evolving Practices

I. Information resource for teachers/students

II. Interactive educational experiences

III. Interactive conversation (forums)

IV. Interactive conversation (teacher and student authoring)

Join the Discussion

Serendip References

• Teaching With/On the Web, 2004
• Serendip's Evolving Web Principles, 2001
• Inquiry, Interaction, and Technology, a trico workshop for education students, 1999-2000
• Education and Technology, an earlier effort to bring together relevant experiences/materials, 2000

Background and Theory
(From Serendip's Evolving Web Principles, 2001)

1. The Web is a rich source of materials. It provides, to anyone having access to it, a wealth of information, ideas, and perspectives orders of magnitude greater than was previously available to even the richest and most powerful human beings.

2. The disorder of the Web is one of its greatest virtues. As a fundamentally decentralized system of information exchange, it makes available, to a much greater degree than any prior human institution, the widest possible array of information/ideas/perspectives in a diversity of forms which, for the first time, approximates the diversity of human users.

3. The Web makes possible a revolution in "education" in the broadest sense, by making available to all human beings not only information/ideas/perspectives, but also "experiences", of a kind which individuals can themselves learn from, rather than being told about.

4. The interactivity of the Web is perhaps its most important characteristic. For the first time in human history, it is becoming possible for all humans to play an active role in world-wide cultural and intellectual interchange. This means not only that everybody's ideas/perspectives can be made available, but also that people can develop their ideas and perspectives in extensive interaction with other people.