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A New Social Context for Information

1/16/2008


 - And finally writes a paper for her instructor

She also could use her Facebook account to interact with her Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter spaces at Facebook instead of going to those separate sites. Web 2.0 is inter-connected.

In all the cases cited above, all functionality exists on the Web, except for Second Life that requires a client on your personal computer to use the functionality at the Second Life site.

Paul Graham, who has tracked the growth of Web 2.0 over the past 3 years, said, "There hasn't been such a wave of new applications since microcomputers first appeared." -- Paul Graham, http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html. He also said, "Web 2.0 means using the Web the way it's meant to be used."

Web 2.0 is becoming a tipping point for creative energy in higher education's use of technology, moving its center from the campus desktop or server to the Web. It also is providing new ways to build and structure knowledge. Web 2.0 moves information technology from the stage of managing and reinforcing the status quo in higher education (e.g., course management systems) to the next stage of providing a millennial re-structuring of the philosophical understanding of knowledge.


Trent Batson, Ph.D. has served as an English professor, director of academic computing, and has been an IT leader since the mid-1980s. He is currently a Communication Strategist in the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology at MIT. batsontr@mit.edu

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Trent Batson, "A New Social Context for Information," Campus Technology, 1/16/2008, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=57281

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