Crowded Wisdom

The World Wide Web was created in the early 1990s and was primarily designed as a way for people to get information. Content creators made the content and the average web user simply consumed that content. Unless you were the geeky type who could work out how to publish your own webpage, you really had no easy way of creating your own content.

Web 2.0 changed all that. The term “Web 2.0″ is different to the original web of the 1990s, and refers to those websites that provide an opportunity for average users to contribute content, connect to others and collaborate together using nothing more than a web browser. It’s about social networking, uploading as well as downloading, making friends and connecting to others. It’s sometimes known as the read/write web, the collaborative web, or the browser-based web. It has turned the web into a two way medium where people participate actively in the creation of content. It’s about not just being a consumer, but becoming a contributor.

Some of the more well known Web 2.0 applications include MySpace, Blogger, YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, Wordpress, Del.icio.us, Flickr and many more… the thing that all these sites have in common is the way they invite people to easily contribute and share content on the Web.

For your culminating task, you need to investigate and report on two different Web 2.0 applications.

You will find a fairly comprehensive listing of W2 websites at http://www.go2web20.net/

Pick two and spend time playing with them, reading their websites and learning what they try to do. Experiment. Play. Explore. Discover. Share.

Once you have spent time finding your two favourite Web 2.0 apps, write a report which highlights at least the following points.

• Name of the site?
• What does it do?
• How does it work?
• Who would use it?
• How does it promote the ideas of communication, collaboration, sharing and social networking?
• What problems do you image it will solve?
• What problems do you imagine it will create?
• Why do you like it?
• Any other information that you think may be relevant.

This is not an exhaustive list, but should be a reasonable starting point. Feel free to add other points that you think might be important to include.

Publish your reviews as two separate posts on your school blog. I’d like you to really make an effort to write a logical, well constructed post, using examples and your own observations. The post can be as long as you like, in fact I wouldn’t expect you to be able to do justice to this task in a couple of paragraphs. I want to see your writing, and to see how well you can use words to communicate an idea and clarify your thoughts. And remember, you are publishing to the web, where anyone can see your work, so make it count.  Spelling, grammar, structure…  it all makes a difference to the way you communicate.

Due by Monday January 15th (no extensions possible sorry!)

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below.