With this nation's renewed interest in children and education in the 1990s, there have been significant signs of recent growth in the media literacy movement emerging in the United States. In the State of North Carolina, for example, media literacy is included in both the Communication Skills (English) curriculum and in the Information Skills curriculum. In many communities, educators have begun the process of thinking seriously about expanding the concept of literacy to include media. While there was only one teacher-training program in media literacy in 1993, in 1994 there were 12 different programs held across the United States. However, in most communities, media literacy exists due to the energy and initiative of a single teacher, not because of a coordinated, community-wide programmatic plan of implementation. At present, only one such plan is now underway, in the community of Billerica, Massachusetts, which is developing a comprehensive media literacy program that reaches all students across the curriculum in grades K - 12.
But as with Web 2.0, the real secret of success in Government 2.0 is thinking about government as a platform. If there's one thing we learn from the technology industry, it's that every big winner has been a platform company: someone whose success has enabled others, who've built on their work and multiplied its impact. Microsoft put "a PC on every desk and in every home," the internet connected those PCs, Google enabled a generation of ad-supported startups, Apple turned the phone market upside down by letting developers loose to invent applications no phone company would ever have thought of. In each case, the platform provider raised the bar, and created opportunities for others to exploit.
