Unlike the one-way information dump that was Web 1.0, the social-based Web 2.0 is much more interactive. This evolution marked the birth of friend sites like Facebook in which people could stay in touch by sharing and communicating within their online circles. This was the beginning of something new, a completely new way of connecting to your friends outside of F2F environments not constrained by distance or time.
Not unlike Facebook, MET’s online community has provided a social platform for like-minded individuals to share professional, learning, and personal experiences. Although more a collegial or working network than a friend network, my MET peers have been an invaluable learning construct providing assistance, support and camaraderie that has scaffolded learning that couldn’t have happened otherwise. It was these experiences during many of the intermediate to later courses in MET that have convinced me that substantial social and experiential learning can occur in online environments. In many ways, we have created formal online work groups within our MET courses based on our common goals of course completion and knowledge acquisition. This provided me with experiential evidence that online professional development methods like lesson study had potential.
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