(RadioFlyer007 – http://flickr.com/photos/radioflyer007/402409100/ ) First they’re told they are the cut and paste generation, then they’re told they don’t exist. John amongst others points to the British Library research looking at people’s use of virtual libraries. The headlines of the report are that: i) For some habits there is little evidence that youngsters use the internet particularly differently to others, we all have bad habits ii) The behaviours people exhibit are: Horizontal information seeking, lots of time navigating, view rather than read, squirreling (ie downloading for later use), quickly assess authority for themselves. iii) Young people do not find library sites intuitive and prefer Google iv) Children make narrow relevance…

There’s been lots of talk about social objects over the past year. A social object is something (it can be real or virtual) that facilitate conversation, and thus social interaction (Hugh MacLeod gives a good overview of them). Hugh argues that social networks are built around social objects, not vice versa. This may not be true of ego-centric networks, but certainly is for task-centric ones such as Flickr. Hugh’s take on them is from a marketing perspective, but as someone who’s interested in applying web 2.0 to education, the question I’d want to answer is ‘what would a social object be in education?’ On campus that’s probably pretty obvious –…