The ‘Net Gen’ have it right!

The World Wide Web (WWW), now often referred to as Web 1.0, was intended to be used to share ideas and promote discussion, and for several decades it has served us well. However, technology has matured and Web 2.0 is becoming a common vehicle of mass communications. Web 2.0 is described as a participatory Web or the Read/Write Web which facilitates collaboration and sharing between users.  

Web 2.0 increases the presence of the individual allowing anyone to create and upload print, audio, and video to the Internet without knowing HTML programming codes. This interactivity is possible because of RSS technology. (RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.”) RSS is an XML format for sharing content among different Web sites.

Due to rapid changes in technology, demographics, business, the world is entering a new age where people participate in the economy as never before. New low-cost collaborative infrastructures now allow thousands of individual and small producers to co-create products, access markets, and share knowledge. This new level of mass collaboration in the workplace using the Web 2.0 environment is based on openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally.

The “Net Generation” is already comfortable with this environment with their use of such sites as My Space, and Facebook. For the Net Generation the Web is no longer a library of information, but a web of openness, sharing, social interaction, and community. The Net Generation is already familiarizing themselves with the tools of Web 2.0 in spite of the lack or efforts of many K-12 schools and the level of the settings of the school Internet filters. Now is the time for the K-12 schools to put aside their fears of the abuse of Internet Resources and educate their students as to the full potential of Web 2.0 tools and prepare them for the 21st Century workforce.