When the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) opens in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, David Weinberger will set the stage on June 27 with a keynote address, “The New Shape of Knowledge.” A widely published author and fellow at Harvard’s prestigious Berkman Institute for Internet and Society, Weinberger has been paying close attention to what it means to know, to teach, and to learn in an increasingly connected world. His own interests cut across diverse fields—from philosophy to mystery writing to technology. Recently, Weinberg offered The Intel® Innovator a preview of the ideas he will be sharing at NECC.

What would you say is your vision for technology in education?
The biggest change which technology can help to bring about in education is a shift in the locus of authority and expertise. Technology can help to distribute expertise through a variety of avenues (the Web, other networks, individuals) in a way that an instructor lecturing from a textbook never could.

This isn’t just because students tend to be the early-adopters of technology, but because networked, social technologies are radically changing the way students and people interact. One need only look at an example like the Wikipedia* to see how a user-generated encyclopedia is uniquely different from all other encyclopedias.

What are some of the best examples of new technologies that you are keeping an eye on?
There are a number of examples of different free Web services that I think hold a lot of potential—and a lot of interest for me. However, one example I’d like to speak about is the change that has to occur in the model of teaching. For instance, teachers are typically evaluated (by national and state tests) based on how their individual students perform. However, when most students are given a large assignment—one that they work on from home—they use a computer to instant message friends while working on it.

So, students work collaboratively on a project (I know, some fear this is cheating, but the reality is this is how people work in the ‘real world’), and then students are graded based on their individual efforts when they worked within a group. Finally, a teacher is evaluated based on this misevaluation of student effort when, in fact, the student’s work (and his or her team) may have done everything correctly, but it just doesn’t show up on the tests.

What are the roadblocks and obstacles to implementation?
I believe we have to think differently about the way in which we organize knowledge. The Aristotelian model of knowledge being organized like the branches from the trunk of a tree doesn’t work in the digital model. That is, groups of users (which are called P2P, peer-to-peer, networks) can co-locate their organizational models. What that means is knowledge of one particular thing doesn’t have to fit into one category or one taxonomy. It can inhabit many different realms. And with the way digital networks operate, users never have to muddle with the connections, they just create them and they are there.

What do you see as the biggest changes on the horizon for education and the impact of technology?
There are a number of different tools which education needs to embrace to change the way students are taught—because they are learning differently. These include things like instant messaging, social software like Flickr* and Delicious*. These tools are all emerging from the grassroots and are both informing and changing our knowledge base.