Is the Internet good or bad? Should we ban it or embrace it? Is there a place for web 2.0 in our schools? These simplistic questions fail to acknowledge the complex and multifaceted aspects of digital literacy and digital content today. A practical question many people may ask themselves regarding the Internet is, “What constructive role can and should I play in the network economy?” I like Tim-Berner Lee’s recent ideas shared in a BBC interview:
I feel that we need to individually work on putting good things on it, finding ways to protect ourselves from accidentally finding the bad stuff, and that at the end of the day, a lot of the problems of bad information out there, things that you don’t like, are problems with humanity.
I also like Tim’s response to a question about validating information on the web. In discussions with educational administrators today regarding WikiPedia, this came up quite a bit (as I hoped it would.) Here’s what Tim said:
When you say there are a lot of lies out there, if you go randomly picking up pieces of paper in the street or leafing through garbage at the garbage dump what are the chances you’ll find something reliable written on the paper that you find there? Very small. When you go onto the internet, if you really rummage around randomly then how do you hope to find something of any of value?
But when you use the web, you follow links and you should keep bookmarks of the places where following links turns out to be a good idea. When you go to a site and it gives you pointers to places that you find are horrible or unreliable, then don’t go there again.
You see out there right now, for example, when you look at bloggers some of them are very careful. A good blogger when he says that something’s happened will have a point to back, and there’s a certain ethos within the blogging community, you always point to your source, you point all the way back to the original article. If you’re looking at something and you don’t know where it comes from, if there’s no pointer to the source, you can ignore it.
I concur with Tim about this ethos of linking when blogging. A post I have been considering for some time and will hopefully write soon will be titled, “Hypertext writing: Powerful Communication.” I think a case can be made for blogging with hypertext writing as the most powerful communication medium ever conceived in the history of our planet. A bold claim. But I think a justified one. More on this thought later! 
On this day..
- Oren Lee Peters - Stories of My Life - 2011
- Sounds of My World - My new sound blog - 2011
- Bypassing draconian Chinese Internet content filtering #learning2cn - 2010
- Great student project examples, lesson ideas and links integrating media #learning2cn - 2010
- Thinking about dark matter, the origins and size of the universe - 2009
- Delete multiple (or all) photos from an iPhone or iTouch with Image Capture - 2009
- Hello from Hong Kong - 2009
- Flip Video First Impressions - 2008
- Obama continues to embrace social networking tools - 2007
- Announcing K-12 Online! - 2006
