The November e.learning age includes an article by Donald Hunter suggesting that education is struggling to keep pace with student expectations about technology and presentation. Mobiles are assumed and Google is familiar. "Simply put, today's students learn differently to previous generations. They have come to expect information to be presented in timely, dynamic and entertaining forms."....."deep down we expect students to learn the way we did"..."what this adds up to is a paradigm gulf that separates students from the learning experience."

This is confirming the idea that I should just take a look at what is happening, rather than worry too much about the theory behind a design. I have so far more or less ignored the conferencing features in Acrobat 8. I still think the JDF for print is worth continuing with but I have written in the IPEX 2002 blog about imagining some time travel to move the world of print on towards 2008. More on this later. it may make sense eventually.

So I hope to spend the next few months observing what happens with forms of collaboration such as Breeze or now Acrobat Connect. It is not yet available outside the US. It seems to me to combine featurea available elsewhere. The whiteboard idea, videoconferencing and internet chat or phone are all available and have been for a while. I still prefer text but this is probably dated so is due for reconsideration.