What is Pedagogue

The excitement of Web 2.0 and E-learning 2.0 is upon us. As the use of social networking sites and other Web 2.0 tools continue to increase, pedagogues are considering their place within education. Some passionately share their research findings or experiments of blogging, wikiing, podcasting and other tools, to empower a new wave in learning and teaching. The authors feel part of this new culture and have undertaken their own research with seventy health care students, harnessing collective intelligence to scaffold their learning in anaesthesia. In this chapter, the authors too share our excitement about the 2.0 era with some notes of caution. From an educational perspective, they believe there is a void between Web 2.0 and E-learning 2.0 - in the shape of pedagogy. What academics have traditionally delivered in a classroom setting has been framed around a sound set of principles – the pedagogy. As for e-learning, many of us have adopted classroom pedagogies within the ever-evolving online world and have noted their incompatibilities. Nevertheless, the common aim of using technology in education is intended to support the learner in their studies. Integrating any (new or old) technologies into education requires a pedagogy that is effective in information exchange, yet flexible enough to respond to the various demands placed upon learning and teaching by both the learner, and the technology. This chapter details the authors’ evidence-based pedagogical model – Mode Neutral – showing how contemporary education can promote the use of Web 2.0 tools to harness collective intelligence. They will outline our case study of using (arguably) a Web 1.0 technology, the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) as the single learning space, with Web 2.0 tools integrated to encourage collaborative learning.