No Need Any More

It has been a very long day of preparing a Digital Citizenship conference in Missouri on Friday, and trying to get caught up on stuff. I just got to e-mail only an hour ago. One of the most interesting aspects of the day was posing a question on Twitter about digital natives, digital immigrants, and digital citizens, and then harvesting the two dozen or so insightful responses that I got back and including them in the wiki handouts for Friday’s conference.

Speaking at the NCCCADL ConferenceYesterday I presented at the North Carolina Community Colleges Distance Learning Conference. It’s probably the one type of conference that I am least qualified to present at, and that I learn the most from. These are digital educators in almost every sense of the word, and just great folks.

During lunch (fantastic lasagna), the president of the association proposed, as part of a business meeting, changes in the association’s by-laws, one of them to remove the organizations web master as a de facto member of the board of directors. When the by-laws were first written, they had a web master who was the person they all had to go to to publish information on the web. The web required such a person with the technical knowledge and skills. It made sense that the web master should be in on the meetings.

Today, however, there is no reason for the web master to attend meetings, because they do not have a web master. There is no need. The association uses some sort of content management system, so that the appropriate board (or association) member can publish their information directly to the site.

It’s just another indication of how the Web is changing.

Image Citation:
Keough, Patrick. “The ‘BUZZ’ In Distance Learning for NC.” KEOBLOG. 20 Feb 2008. 21 Feb 2008 <http://keoughp.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/the-buzz-in-distance-learning-for-nc/>.

Technorati Tags:

2 thoughts on “No Need Any More”

  1. Ironically, I never make webpages anymore. I have moved completely to blogs and wikis. The only thought I have about everyone being able to contribute to a companies’ webspace is, that all contributors are not alike. I would think that a company would want to have one philosophy and image. What do you do about the contributor that goes against that grain?

  2. As long as the other members are keeping a finger on the pulse of new Web tech, then I think the move to ax the Webmaster makes sense. However, if they truly had to go to the Webmaster to publish things on the Web before because they had “no technical knowledge or skills” — then having the Webmaster there could help them become better (more innovative) digital educators. Utilizing a Webmaster just to post content is a waste, tapping into their knowledge and improving distance ed seems like a better use.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *