WEB 2.0 ... What is it?

Well... We hear this term, WEB 2.0, used allot these days but what is it really? Is it a thing, something tangible? mmm... Not really but guess what? Your experiencing it right now.

Wikipedia's short and skinny version reads:

"It is a trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users."

10 years ago, the world wide web was a static holding tank of information. The content was updated only by webmasters who controlled those sites. Today's web has evolved into something much more dynamic.

A comment from someone on YouTube in response to a video explaining Web 2.0 wrote:

"Web 2.0 is a buzzword that no one has the same definition for, even experts. It's is more of an abstract than concrete. It's about the way the web is evolving and changing toward providing more interaction with users, making users the content generators - but then, it's also about design. So web 2.0 encompasses not only the interactive content but also that sleek, minimalist shiny design you all see."

Here is a video that helped me learn more about Web 2.0. It's a bit fast, and slightly hard to follow, but it's the best one I could dig up (today).



Now imagine what the web will be like for our children and students 10 years from now. It begs questions to me like: "Are we doing everything we can to prepare our children for the web of tomorrow, or the web we know today?" and "How do we prepare our children for something that doesn't exist yet?" or "How can we teach or help create content generators?"

I don't know or have the answers for either of these questions but it does make me think of the last seven words of any dying organization: "We have always done it that way."

Just a thought! I would love to hear your comments and I hope you found this informative, and thought provoking as well.