After reading Tapscott (2008) chapter 1: Wikinomics, I consider that some of the educational implications of wikinomics are the followings. Regarding either a general educational context or a specific ELT context, the four principles involving wikinomics (openness, peering, sharing and acting globally) play an important role since the way societies harness knowledge and capability to innovate and create value is changing constantly. This is why new forms of mass collaboration are emerging and in consequence many different sectors are being influenced.
Within the educational sector, especially teachers must be prepared to guide students towards the new society demands. The key concept of wikinomics is collaboration, so educators must understand and promote it to achieve everyone’s expectations.
In my opinion and for my personal experience, I consider that this new ways of mass collaboration is highly influencing ELT contexts. A lot of social learning networks are available online, such as Learncentral which allow anyone to co-interact with authentic material whenever someone is willing to do it and in this way people can improve their language performance at their pace. Besides, teachers and students are constantly surrounded by many different tools to encourage lifelong learning and they are getting involved in the new trends in order to make their life more manageable and be able to create knowledge with anyone around the world. However, there are also some negative implications, most of them related to copyright issues. It is very important to make students aware of the importance of not stealing anyone’s ideas and always try to know the owner of the information.
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