Models of Innovation and The Read/Write Web

This summer I finished reading "Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. These books complement each other in that they both look at trends from different vantage points. The former from a more statistical point of view and the latter a more sociological.

There are many great ideas in both these books, but something that really struck me in Gladwell's book was his example of the diffusion model. Gladwell used the example of farmers acceptance of an innovation – a new hybrid seed corn – and different characteristics that farmers engendered. I thought that this might be simple way to look at the acceptance of educational technology, and my own perceptions on where we are right now. We still have a long way to go.

The diffusion model breaks down adopters of an innovation into the following characteristics.

Innovators – Those educators, who might be considered the adventurous ones, the risk takers of our profession.

Early Adopters – Educators who were infected by the innovators. This group includes the opinion leaders who watched and analyzed what the innovators were doing. This is a slightly larger group.

Early Majority – The large group of educators who follow the early adopters.

Late Majority – The deliberate and skeptical masses that would not try anything until the most respected educators had tried it first.

Laggards - The most traditional educators of all, and see no urgent reason to change.

Unfortunately, a blanket statement about innovation around the read/write web would not apply to all schools, school districts or regions. This is also an oversimplification of an innovation that includes many complexities, which are not accounted for in this model.

As an educational community at large, I still think we are at the innovator stage, with some small breaks into the early adopters area, but these breaks are few and far between.

Here are a few questions to ponder are:

1. Do you use a blog, wiki or other internet based collaborative technologies with your students? Or yourself?
2. Where would you place yourself in this model with regards to the read/write web?
3. Where would you place your school? district? province/state? country? initiatives around the read/write web?