Untangling the Web Education

It's the first day of school and you're set for a new academic year: you've got all your supplies jammed into your new school rucksack: the pens and notebooks, coloured pencils and stapler, three-ring binders and textbooks.

Now add your laptop or tablet, a wifi connection, a list of usernames and passwords, account details for blogging platforms, social networks, photo sharing sites, cloud-based research resources, collaboration tools and digital 3D learning environments.

That's one heavy bag.

The Web is the ultimate distributed network of information, so how has it transformed the learning process in the last twenty years? For this fortnight's Untangling the Web, I'm dissecting the beating heart of today's education system to discover how people are using the web in classrooms, at home and in libraries, from nursery to university, and whether it's helping or hindering the education process.

It's an enormous topic, with many vested interests. I'll be focussing on pedagogical theories, online education enablers, novel learning techniques and approaches that the web affords rather than focussing on the following themes (which demand their own columns):

- games and learning
- education regulation and policy
- key stages and Internet safety/citizenship
- disinformation
- specific classroom technologies

Do you have a digital education story to share? Add your comments below, or send an email to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk. You can also tweet me @aleksk.

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Untangling the Web serendipity education lifestages home intellectual property death

Over the next two months, I'll be untangling the effects of the World Wide Web from six more human social phenomena, documenting findings from the academic research and interviews with experts on the Untangling the Web blog and in the fortnightly columns in The Observer.

I've already looked at a whole host of topics including social change, love, hate, sex, health, family, religion, disability and Britishness - among many others.

Looking forward, I'll be asking how digital media has - or hasn't - transformed the experiences and functions of serendipity and discovery, education, life stages (from birth to old age), home, intellectual property and death.

Send your thoughts on these topics to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk or to @aleksk, and I'll try to include your responses on the blog and in the column.

First up: serendipity.

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Untangling the Web Serendipity

The chocolate cookie was a serendipitous discovery. Photograph: Colin Campbell for the Guardian

Serendipity, the enigmatic process that's been credited with producing everything from penicillin to the chocolate chip cookie, is the almost-magical convergence of a (happy) accident and the sagacity of knowing what to do with it.

The web has been described by some pundits as "the greatest serendipity engine in the history of culture", and commercial companies - like Google - are looking to harvest your enormous cloud of data to deliver serendipitous experiences before you even know what to search for.

But other pundits have decried the web's filtering mechanics for reducing serendipity, and potentially stifling innovation rather than creating it.

So who's right? Is the web a serendipity machine or a tool for cultural homogenisation? Or is it, like so many things, not nearly so black and white?

This fortnight, I tackle a pet topic: what is the web doing for (or against) serendipity. Follow the progress on the Untangling the Web blog for all the links, interviews, photos, videos, articles and academic research on serendipity and the web that will feed this article.

Send your thoughts to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk, comment below, or @ me on Twitter @aleksk. I look forward to being inspired.

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Untangling the Web Friendship

What has the Web done to friendship, a feature of functioning society that both keeps us accountable to one another and provides us with the emotional support we psychologically need? Do we devalue our close friends by widening our social circles out to hundreds of "friends" on social networks? Can the Web serve as a replacement mechanic for the bonding that happens with face-to-face experience? Or does it connect us with people we'd never have met otherwise?

This fortnight's Untangling the Web column delves into the function of friendship, and the form it takes online.

Have you unexpectedly made a bff online, or has a social network left you with emotional anemia? Send your thoughts and stories to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk or ping me on twitter @aleksk with the hashtag #friendship.

Follow the Untangling the Web tumblog for all the research and interviews that will feed the column over the next two weeks.

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Untangling the Web friendship

What did the Web of friendship, a feature of functioning society, both us facing each other keeps and provides us with emotional support, we need psychologically? Devalue we our close friends by our social circles widening out to hundreds of "Friends" on social networks? Be on the Web can serve as a replacement race mechanic of the bonding, which happens with personal experience? Or join us would with people we have otherwise never met?

It takes these two weeks Untangling, deepened the Web column in the function of friendship and the form is online.

Have you made a Kallerna online unexpectedly or a social network has left you with emotional anemia? Send your thoughts and stories to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk or ping me on Twitter @ Aleksk with the Hashtag-# friendship.

Follow the Untangling of the Tumb Web log for the research and interviews, which are the column in the next two weeks feed.

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