The Evolution of the Net: Web 2.0
"Facebook's Population Is Now as Big as the Entire World's Was in 1804" (Rosen, 2012) .
What quietly began in the 1960's as a way for scientists to share information has become the main driver of our modern age. The internet has changed how we communicate, connecting humanity together through millions of computing devices across the globe. 4 billion people look at Youtube everyday- websites now offer advice on how to go viral. Time magazine named us "person of the year" in 2006 because we "made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software." This is the Web 2.0 Age, where collaboration and content is driven by the user.
What quietly began in the 1960's as a way for scientists to share information has become the main driver of our modern age. The internet has changed how we communicate, connecting humanity together through millions of computing devices across the globe. 4 billion people look at Youtube everyday- websites now offer advice on how to go viral. Time magazine named us "person of the year" in 2006 because we "made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software." This is the Web 2.0 Age, where collaboration and content is driven by the user.
all kinds of cool things
"Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom" (Grossman, 2006).
The new Web 2.0 reality is about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. However, all communities and all collaborations are not always positive creations; the internet world can be socially isolating. As teachers, we have the responsibility to ensure that our students create positive communities and meaningful collaborations. Technology tools such as blogs, RSS feeds, Wikis, or Google Docs in the classroom will help us meet these responsibilities to our students. Our students need to be the creators. For example, we can use technology to:
The new Web 2.0 reality is about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. However, all communities and all collaborations are not always positive creations; the internet world can be socially isolating. As teachers, we have the responsibility to ensure that our students create positive communities and meaningful collaborations. Technology tools such as blogs, RSS feeds, Wikis, or Google Docs in the classroom will help us meet these responsibilities to our students. Our students need to be the creators. For example, we can use technology to:
- get students excited about writing and thinking
- teach students about being responsible Web content generators
- give students an authentic audience for whom to write
- help students participate in the collaborative community of Web 2.0
- give students practice in using tools that the real world uses
- eliminate walls--school can be anywhere there is a computer and the Internet
- time and space really are relative--we can collaborate with anyone, anywhere, anytime (in different time zones)
- learn more, ourselves, about how technology integration pushes our thinking as teachers
- and more (Hogue, 2008)...
Finding the Right Tool
Lets try to find the appropriate Web 2.0 tool for each task. We will use Wikispaces to help us.