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According to a 2007 Pew/Internet study,1 49 percent of Americans only occasionally use information and communication technology. Of the remaining 51 percent, only 8 percent are what Pew calls omnivores, “deep users of the participatory Web and mobile applications.”

According to a 2007 Pew/Internet study,1 49 percent of Americans only occasionally use information and communication technology. Of the remaining 51 percent, only 8 percent are what Pew calls omnivores, “deep users of the participatory Web and mobile applications.”

Shaping user behavior is a “soft” problem that has more to do with psychological and social barriers to technology adoption. Academia has its own cultural mores, which often conflict with experimenting with new ways of doing things. Gardner Campbell put it nicely last year when he wrote, “For an academic to risk ‘failure’ is often synonymous with ‘looking stupid in front of someone’.”2 The safe option for most users is to avoid trying something as risky as new technology.

What is social bookmarking exactly and why do we need it?  Bookmarking sites help to solve a huge problem on the internet. Did you know there are over 16 billion WebPages? How do you make sense of all that information? Of course you can add sites to your favorite’s folder in your web browser but soon that list grows long and messy.  Then you make folders to group sites together but the same thing happens. I long messy list of folders full of long lists of WebPages.   How do you remember which folder you put something in?

At the same time, "International test scores show American children falling further behind those of most of the other developed nations at the very time our competitors are focused on winning the battle for technology-based jobs," said Clough during his installation ceremony.

"It is no longer acceptable for us to share only 1 percent of our 137 million specimens and artifacts in an age when the internet has made it possible to share them all."

Clough's goal is to digitally photograph or scan each object and publish it online, accompanied by curatorial content from Smithsonian experts.

"Web 1.0 was largely a ‘push' operation, taking already existing content and posting it online," said Bower. "Web 2.0 is driven by ‘pull,' not push. ... Kids can create their own content and interact."

Before the internet, Bower said, the two most important developments from an educational perspective were the invention of the printing press and the creation of a university system. But both of these developments were "push" operations, he said--meaning they pushed information out to students, rather than letting students experience learning for themselves.

Now that we have the right medium, Bower said, we have to figure out how to take advantage of it. When any new technology comes out, he explained, we typically superimpose our old ways of doing things on this new medium--and education has been no different.