It's a small world wide web afterall.

Week 1 - Blog posting #1 - Web 2.0

So what about the World Wide Web? Did it really start out being called the World Wide Wire-tap? Has it accidentally become what it has, or are some conspiracy theorists correct about some true underlying “real reason” for the Internet? All I can say for sure is that it is bringing people together. I was amazed to see the timeline and how many web sites were available from the time of its public introduction in 1991 to 2006, when it reported over 100 million. (Solomon, 2007) Within the last few years, the emergence of the ‘new and improved internet’, AKA Web 2.0, has begun to change our society. I don’t believe that all of that change is good, but I would have to say that most of it is. The negative part of the change is that it seems more and more people, especially kids, spend a lot of time in front of a computer screen or sitting in their rooms texting on personal electronic devices instead of going out to ride bikes or any other number of outdoor activities. For this we limit our kids’ computer time.

Here’s a little bit of why I like the new tools that have emerged online. My wife and I are teachers, we are active in our church, and we have a daughter who has CHARGE syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. Deafness is one of our daughter’s disabilities, so she is learning to sign at her school. We have four other kids as well. The old internet (Web 1.0) afforded us quick information and resources for teaching, facts about our daughter’s conditions, updates about our church at the website, and online games for our kids that are both educational and just fun. With Web 1.0, the information was there, provided by a few experts. With Web 2.0, I can contribute to other teachers like I do in my master’s program; I can share things with other parents of CHARGE kids. My wife can stay in contact with everyone at church through face book and they in turn can help each other and support one another (We live in a military town and a lot of husbands are deployed, so face book provides a fast way to see who needs help with something like meals when kids are sick or a lawn that needs mowing). I even have this crazy idea of creating a web site composed mostly of mini web lessons on signing so that parents and family members of deaf kids can log on and learn at their leisure. No longer are we simply information withdrawers, we are collaborators and can become experts in conjunction with other people who have similar interests and challenges in our lives. Web 2.0 tools can even indirectly influence the police on someone’s behalf, like the story of the lost/stolen phone in New York city (Shirky, 2008). I love how we don’t need to rely on a news crew to report on everything anymore, also.

References

Solomon, G., Schrum, L., (2007). WEB 2.0 new tools, new

schools. International Society for Technology in

Education, Washington, D.C.

Shirky, C., (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of

Organizing Without Organizations. New York: The

Penguin Press.