I've been catching up on some of the podcasts available from the recent Webheads In Action Online Convergence. A couple of days ago I listened to the keynote given by Etienne Wenger and Susan Nyrop. Etienne discussed a three dimensional (3 axes of "movement") model for online communities of practice. One of the axes related to synchronous vrs. asynchronous learning vis a vis the physical spaces we occupy. It got me thinking about how we are able manipulate time and space in education. Essentially, we can learn:

• »in the same time and space
• » at the same time in different spaces
• »at different times in the same space
• »at different times and in different spaces

The new tools we have access to open the door to life long learning for our students. We are learning together how to manipulate time. I think this is why using web 2.0 tools in education feels so empowering. We've never really been able to manipulate time before. We've always been its slave. Now we can stretch and mold time to our advantage.

This is just a summary of what I've been thinking. I figure there's a lot of clever people out there who might have a different diagram or perhaps have something to add to this one. You might want to share it on your blog or in your flickr account. I'm tagging this post "edutimespace". If you do the same on your blog, flickr or elsewhere we can all walk through the galleries of each other's thought and see what comes of it.