Armin Hopp of Digital Publishing also presented ‘New Trends in Online Language Training – Blended Learning 2.0’ at Sprachen und Beruf. 'Blended Learning' is a term DP has been using for a while now to describe what can be done with their DVDs and learning programs. While there is not really too much radically new about DP products, I still can’t resist going to DP presentations. This is mostly because Armin Hopp is such an interesting and usually well-informed presenter, and DP usually comes up with a new marketing twist on their familiar products. There is no denying, no matter what you think of DP products, they do market them successfully.
http://www.digitalpublishing.de/english/
This time I was, maybe naively, a little surprised at what a seemingly negative posture on web 2.0 and collaborative working DP has apparently adopted. I suppose that collaborative content creation, web 2.0/3.0 and language services like Livemocha represent such an obvious threat to the walled-garden business model of many publishers, I guess I really shouldn’t have been too astonished with this apparent posturing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
http://www.livemocha.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walled_garden_(media)
During the presentation “web 2.0” was described, more or less, as simply marketing hype; people who produced content for free were supposedly being exploited and poor quality content would take over if this were to continue. To be completely honest, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
For me, web 2.0 is just an established, well-defined concept. We can debate on what web 3.0 entails or even what web 4.0 is going to look like, but 2.0 is just simply a part of the reality I work in. It seems completely normal to me for people to upload content that they have created and licence that through creative commons if that is what they want to do; this has been fact for a little while now.
When I am inspired, I do all kinds of things for free. I don’t necessarily feel I am being exploited if I choose to do it. Payback can take on many forms and is often delayed. Even if it never comes in direct form, those who contribute can be assured that theyare earning their good karma points. Frankly, through my contact with language school owners, language teachers, authors and publishers, I hear many, many more complaints from people who have been working under contract to produce content for money than from those who have been doing it for free.
Of course we can’t expect a big publisher to live on good karma alone, can we? Any content producer obviously produces in an environment today that is very different from the old copyright model. The challenge, in an open and collaborative environment, is to produce and to profit from the production activity. Some opt for harvesting the content their paying clients provide them with and sell that back to those same clients in edited form. Others harness the potentials of a like-minded community and put it all out there for free. Isn’t it pointless for any publisher to ridicule people for contributing to a learning community if that is what they find meaningful?
http://creativecommons.org/
There is so much going on with peer reviewed materials and collaborative content review. I doubt that a decrease in content quality is going to be much of a problem in the future, especially when we consider the speed at which editorial corrections are made these days. Try recalling books, CDs or DVDs once they are out there…Things are going to get really interesting with the release of Moodle 2.0 and Moodle repositories.
The DP presentation seemed to me to reveal direct opposition to most wikinomic notions of ‘sharing’ and ‘community’. It is interesting to see how various publishers and content creators are reacting to new realities. Some seem insecure, some seem threatened and some seem to adapt and look for opportunities in recent developments. Just one glance at the record industry can teach volumes. Radical redefinition of roles is clearly required if survival is a priority. In my opinion, vocabulary harvesting and copywriting client-produced content is going to be an extremely short-lived strategy, if this can be called a strategy at all. Vocabulary in language learning is just one small area but, there are lots of fully functioning, high quality, free alternatives already out there.
www.flashcardexchange.com/tag/english
www.dict.cc/
We are living in exciting times indeed with so many potentials: maybe I am missing something here. I will patiently wait for the Tim avatar to greet me in Second Life...