Engagement. This is often a promised
result of technology, so I feel the need to address and defend it early
on. Because the engagement of Web 2.0 is in the act of content creation,
and seems to exist independent of the particular program being used or even of
being in a formal learning environment, this claim seems not only reasonable but
compelling. Students who continue to post to their blog or to stay
involved in discussion forums during their vacations exemplify the power of Web
2.0 to engage students because of the authentic nature of the work rather than
being required assignments.
Authenticity. Both having an authentic
audience, and having the contributed work be authentic, argue for Web 2.0 as an
active part of K-12 education. When I wrote essays in school (back in the
day...), only my parents and my teachers saw what I wrote. I was, in
effect, writing for "practice" with relatively little feedback. Students
today are creating on the Web for very real audiences, and their writing or
production has to pass a very real test: are they communicating
well? Whether it is the peer audience in school which keeps their Web 2.0
programs within the "walled garden" of the school network, or it is publishing
for the world, both the work and the audience are authentic.
Participation. That is, actually being
a contributor to world's body of knowledge. Previously, to pursue an
educational interest as part of a larger part of one's life work, that interest
had to be within the relatively narrow confines of existing institutional
structures in order to be worthy of publication or presentation--and was rarely
available to students. Now, in an amazing flowering of the Chris
Anderson's "Long Tail" model (www.thelongtail.com), students (and
teachers!) can find specific intellectual paths to tread where they are able to
participate, say, as an historian and not as someone preparing to be an
historian. A student can write a report on an historical figure, or a
scientific theory, and both publish that to the web and also participate in
meaningful ways with other students and adults interested in the same
topic. (Think of all the historical figures and topics that might
otherwise not receive much attention.) There is no good reason to keep our
youth "preparing" for life until their mid-twenties when their contributions to
society could be so important to both us and them much earlier.
Openness and Access to Information. The backbone of the Internet
"Revolution" is openness. Open computer standards, open software, and open
content. Web 2.0 is making obsolete many of the restrictions on access to
information that were intended to protect the rights of creators, but instead
mostly inhibited learning by others. When the world's knowledge doubles in
short periods of time, the incentives or rewards for keeping information
proprietary significantly diminish, and the resulting willingness to share
presents great opportunities to learn and to participate. The ability to
"look something up" or to learn something new has never been greater.
Collaboration. I remember even when I was growing up that
collaboration was said to be important. But, truly, it wasn't. Or,
at least, it wasn't what was really rewarded, either in school or in the
business world. Web 2.0 has actually given real practical value to a
character trait we wanted to instill. In the world of Web 2.0,
collaboration is not only king, but it can be seen and assessed--look at the
history page of a wiki, for example, or the linked list of contributed comments
on the personal profile page of a social network. Web 2.0 has created an
unparalleled ability to build or participate in personal learning networks and
communities of interest or practice.
Creativity. We are, to paraphrase Clay Shirky, in the
midst of the greatest increase of creative capability in the history of the
world. A regular student can write, film, and edit a video which then can
be uploaded to YouTube and potentially seen by more of an audience than some
commercial films actually garner.
Passionate Interest and Personal Expression. More than just the
ability to build a profile page on MySpace, Web 2.0 actually gives both students
and educators to build for themselves a online portfolio of the endeavors they
are passionate about. Where the resume and the degrees have been our
short-cut indicators of abilities and accomplishments, the personal body of work
now contained and hopefully organized on the Web gives eve
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