I’m in my second Web 2.0 Un-conference session: An Overview of Vyew, a Flash-based collaborative workspace that allows conference calls, chatting, threaded discussions, etc. Vyew = “instant workspaces.” The setup for Vyew has been researched and supported by Dr. Henry Lim, a Ph.D. at Stanford, with an ongoing evaluation of e-learning resources at the center.

Here are some Vyew features and concepts:

• promotes active responses – which could, for instance, play out as students synchronously responding to and agumenting a PowerPoint as teacher is presenting.
• Vyew is highly visual, which enhances memory coding in brain (hey, that connects with Hall Davidson’s presentation)

We’ve looked at some pretty amazing examples of med school students working on a PBL task. Students can work on same page, or on separate pages and then sync back up later to share compare. The developers are fine-tuning right now the ability of the instructor to unsync/sync projects to make it easier to track individual student’s input.

The question about control over “malicious deletion” is being addressed. A = think about the permission settings – collaborator vs. viewer, for instance.

Compared to a wiki, which is linear, Vyew is contextual, visual, and non-linear. And the concept mapping tools look very good. And wait, you can pull Auto Cad files in too. Oh, and upload videos.

I’m here in San Francisco at the Web 2.0 Un-Conference that Steve Hargadon energetically and collaboratively put together. The announcement to join the conference came through the Classroom 2.0 ning listserv, with a link to the conference wiki.

Here’s Steve’s overview of Web 2.0:

• Anyone can contribute – and make a difference
• It’s an historic change – it’s a world in which our contribution of material is as significant as our ability to consumer information
• Amazon.com good example of how things have changed: i.e., readers’ ability to add a review. Active example of Web 2.0
• Difference from receiving material to contributing to the web
• “When you write, everybody can hear you” – Quote from participant Andy Pass
• Web 2.0 conversations help refine and improve thinking

Heading off for a discussion of Web 2.0.