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Many young people use the interactive web, or Web 2.0, in their everyday lives, primarily for socialising and entertainment. Particularly empowering to learning are abilities to produce content on the world wide web, and a critical, reflective, metacognitive approach to using the web. In the face of a growing 'participation divide' between youth who have opportunities to engage in these higher order participatory and reflective literacies and those with fewer opportunities, there is an urgent need for teachers to expand literacy instruction. This article offers examples of classroom practices that draw on social elements of Web 2.0 that are favoured by youth to support less practised usages required for learning. Specifically, we describe ways of using new literacies and new forms of texts for locating and critically examining information, and ways of sharing and building knowledge within the participatory and creative landscape of Web 2.0.