Why Web 2.0 is good for education

In the last ten years, the Internet and the Web changed the manner in which we communicate, collaborate, and relate with each other in profound ways. And while most of us were just getting used to the new publishing medium, several Web sites started to emerge that took a fundamentally different approach to what the Web is.

These Web sites instead featured the individual user as the main contributor, evaluator, and manipulator of information within a community of others doing the same. The earliest sites like this were the survivors of the dot-com bubble: eBay (peer evaluation), Amazon (user lists and content reviews), Google (fast, easy search).

Then, early in the new century came weblogs. These tools further fueled innovation because they allowed anyone to read, comment, and publish their own ideas easily without significant technical effort. Suddenly the pace of innovation increased sharply. Soon on the scene were dozens of small "tools" for managing photos (flickr.com), bookmarks (deli.icio.us), news (netvibes.com) and several other functions.

This new paradigm is commonly referred to as the "Web 2.0". Essentially, it's short hand for describing how fundamentally different the Web is from what we were accustom to just five years ago.

Now you're probably asking yourself, what does this have to do with education? The answer is, everything. :-)

Just as Web 2.0 changes how we use the Web, it also changes the relationship between individuals and institutions. For example, the Web 2.0 enables individuals to create and participate in self-organizing communities (meetup.com) without prerequisites of belonging to a formal group or institution.

(For more on this topic, I recommend reading the 95 theses of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" for all about the changing relationship between individuals and institutions. As an enlightening exercise, replace the word 'customer' with 'student', 'market' with 'community' and 'company/corporations' with 'school'.)

To remain viable and relevant to their audiences now and into the future, corporations and organizations are creating highly individualized, interactive, and meaningful online services with unfettered access to a vast collection of content and data (earth.google.com). The very same principle can be applied to education institutions. (I know, because that's one of the things we do.)

What it takes is a hybrid of expertise in both technology and education to identify, assess, and understand which, and in what manner to leverage, the increasing number of Web 2.0 tools and services that have promise for creating sustainable and meaningful change in education.