Over the last month I've been adapting and redelivering the Web Essentials material to this year's MA Visual Communication students, and to selected undergraduate classes too (final year Theatre & Performance Design, and second-year Graphics). It's always interesting to get a sense of the continued relevance of the material as time progresses, and to figure out how we need to adapt our strategies to the new realities. I wanted to capture a few of the key observations, and over the coming few weeks I'll try to make sense of them.

1. The digital native is still not what we expected, and probably never will be.
2. Requiring students to set up a blog for their course makes less and less sense (unless it's a blogging course).
3. There's a long tail of networks and services developing, but it's still fragile.
4. The network-awareness that enables students to make imaginative leaps is emerging, but slowly.
5. Confusing the strategy with the goal is still widespread, and our assessment makes the problem worse.

Much more to say about this soon. In the meantime get in touch here or via Twitter if you've insight or questions on applying online strategies in your own teaching.