The Importance of the Second Loop in Educational Technology: An Action Science study of introducing blogging in a course curriculum

Integrating new Internet based technologies into the classroom will be a major, ongoing task for educators over the coming years.  The readable/writable web changes our relationships with information along with the traditional student/teacher relationships.  In the  The Importance of the Second Loop in Educational Technology:  An Action Science study of introducing blogging in a course curriculum we describe an Action Science approach based on the work of Chris Argyris and Donald Schon for reorienting the organizational structure of the class in a 21^st century information ecology. 

We attempted to develop a blogcentric curriculum that does not just use educational blogging as an addendum to the curriculum (as many early attempts to use blogging have done), but as a central component that mirrors the way the Internet is used outside of the classroom. The major point of this paper is found in its title – we found that we really only made progress in when opening ourselves up to a second loop of learning.

Integration of the Internet into educational process does and we believe will continue to change the governing variables of the classroom.  Action science offers a framework for exploring and understanding the deep organizational changes to teaching and learning engendered by the introduction of the Internet as a true partner in education.

I look forward to continuing this discussion with you! Please feel free to offer comment or question. FREE access to this article for the next 30 days is available through this link.

Michael Glassman