Disruptive Scholarship ; an idea whose time has come

Gerry McKiernan's presentation last month at the International Plagiarism Conference in Newcastle (UK) can be viewed. As he says "In this presentation, we will review the Read/Write Traditions of the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences; analyze key Past / Present / Future Participatory Technologies; and explore the potential of Web 2.0 for creating/fostering Disruptive Learning / Scholarship / Teaching in the 21st century." The 152 slides contain some interesting connections between the way material has and may be re-used in the future across a variety of disciplines. Just as the stones of Hadrian's Wall have been re-used (just like our Roman buildings in the tower St Albans Abbey!) so will words and ideas be re-used. The slides about wikis and wikipedia are to me the most useful, and wikis could become "highly appropriate for sholarly communication if scholars trust one another and are collaborating onthe text...,and security and rollback mechanisms are in place."(David Mattison).There are examples of Wikipedia school and University projects. Finally there are lots of mock tag clouds at the end of the presentation to reinforce the message.