I’ve written about Dr. Michael Wesch a number of times in the past. For those of you not familiar, Dr. Wesch is a professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University and heads the Digital Ethnography Working Group, a team of cultural anthropology undergraduates exploring the impact of digital technology on human interaction and human interaction on digital technology.

Wesch, dubbed the Explainer by Wired Magazine has created and produced videos on technology, education, and information have been viewed over seven million times and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. He is perhaps most known for his videos that concisely but accurately describing the fundamental concepts surrounding the Web 2.0 phenomenon (Web 2.0… The Machine Is Us/ing Us). He recently did a public presentation on June 17, 2008 at the University of Manitoba where he described his own attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future.

“It’s basically an ongoing experiment to create a portal for me and my students to work online,” he explains. “We tried every social media application you can think of. Some worked, some didn’t.”

Image by University of Manitoba

The video I am linking to above on the University of Manitoba website is all about media literacy and how he engages his students at Kansas State University. This 66 minute video provides some insight into how he tries to make students knowledge-able (able to create and critique knowledge) rather than knowledgeable (mind dump education). The 66 minute video is lengthy but well worth the time if you are involved in education or professional development or are interested in what is really possible and how it can be done using collaborative technologies to engage and interact with learners.