Web 2.0 Reflection

Web 2.0 Tools are opening up the Web as the place to create. It becomes the work space with tools at our fingertips. The applications themselves are there. Many of these are recasts of off line resources in a web environment, but that in itself creates leverage.

Accessibility, I think, is the prime advantage in that work can be accessed from virtually anywhere, enabling enormous collaboration, perspective, and robust evaluation.

It will always be a challenge to separate the wheat (good stuff) from the chaff (not-so-good stuff) and I guess all of that forces and encourages social networking and collaboration to decide what is the best of the best in terms of tools and resources. In the long run, that is what will survive.

Websites like TeachersFirst are excellent buffers to mediate the good and the bad and provide a clearinghouse for tools ready for the classroom. I think we need that intermediary.

Actually, from my perspective, it seems to me that Web 2.0 Tools are one giant step closer towards intuitive applications on the Web, thus more likely to unite Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. I do not think these tools are driving a divide. There are still many competing forms that I think over time will result in the dominant, most used, best-of-the-best ones become the defacto standard---this is a lot like how computer "hardware" technology itself was a number of years ago before the PC and MAC became household words. Anyway, by way of illustration, I added my Gliffy concept map on the "Digital Divide"...