middle adopters

Dave Cormier, one of the hosts of EdTechTalk (audio), has written about “middle adopters” or second wavers and their expectations in his blog, Dave’s Educational Blog. His comments relate fairly well I feel to that middle mass of teachers who are asking us to explain why we use new media, who want to be able to “see where they??re going to get without asking alot of questions that they know the first wavers have heard a zillion times”. They want to show up, copy and paste, and then make it happen in their own lives.

He says “This is what i would like to see happen for new media education. I would like to see a copy and paste solution for a classroom wiki project. A copy and paste solution for blogging with your students. These things, these copy and paste solutions are the markers of a mature medium. Once things can be easily copied, they are really part of the mainstream. And for my part I want the read/write web to be part of the mainstream. I want students to be producers of knowledge. I want them to be able to control the media that is trying to control them.”

“The second wave (the middle adopters) is the audience many of us are seeking. We need to produce for them, not for us?? until we all blend into the same, and those separations wont matter anymore, and blogging will really be the same as calling someone on the telephone”.