Over on David Warlick’s blog, there’s a fascinating conversation on the First Year Teachers post going on about use of the term Web 2.0, the "newness" of these tools and how we talk about the change we see around us.

David writes:

Back to my question — I think that Web 2.0 is real, we need to be able to label it, and to talk about it, to deconstruct it, lay it out, and apply its parts. It is changing how we use information, and this affects what and how our children learn. It’s OK that these beginning teachers can’t do this — as long as doing it, taking part in this conversation, becomes part of teaching.

This has led to a fascinating conversation with folks like David Thornburg, Andy Carvin, Mark Wagner and others (like me) chiming in.

I had originally had a bunch of the comments posted in here, but go read the whole conversation because it’s worth it… then come back. I’ll wait.

For those who didn’t read the whole thing (and why didn’t you?) here are my comments:

Certainly, the points you make that the ability to do these things have been around for a while, and yes, I was doing cyber-mentoring in the classroom with kids posting their work and emailing mentors (using Pine as their email client) back in 1997, and I, too, had my photo gallery and favorite links on my web page back in 1994. But that’s not what makes right now so exciting.

There are a few differences between Flickr and a good ol [img] tag, between blogger and my old static web page. One, the ease of use matters. As long as I had to write [img src = /images/meandmykid.jpg], upload the files, etc… then there was always a barrier to entry. (To say nothing of having a server space, etc…) These tools have democratized content creation in powerful ways.

Two, commenting / the development of more and more dynamic pages have meant that there have been more and more communities developing. And yes, USENET did a wonderful job of creating communities back in the day, but the explosion of people taking part in these communities does suggest something new and powerful.

Three, I think RSS — and by extension, networking — matters. The idea of a client-side content update vehicle that makes it easy for me to find new blog posts, see when my favorite photographers have posted new photos or what links my friends find interesting is powerful and makes it possible to take part more deeply.

Finally, yes, that was the birth of the term “Web 2.0,” however, as Postman writes, rarely is the inventor of a tool the best judge of its use. The term has had a life long beyond what O’Reilly thought of. (See the recent dust-up over their attempts to stop others from using it.) It’s short-hand for the Read/Write Web or whatever else we want to call it.

In the end, there’s no question that the web of today stands on the shoulders of giants who developed the tools that launched it. There’s no question that it is an evolutionary process, but as someone who remembers his Cleveland FreeNet password, I don’t think we can deny the power and energy around what is being done now. And I think David’s idea that we should examine what is going on now and try to find out how we use it powerfully in education is a noble goal, whatever we call it.

I want to add to them a bit because I think it’s important.

Yes, everything that Dr. Thornburg mentioned is true… most of the tools we’ve seen before have come before in other forms, and I admit that sometimes it can get a little frustrating when you see folks discovering things that have been do-able for a long time. There needs to be a sense of history about what we’re doing now, so that we can learn from the past and move forward intelligently.

But there also has to be a recognition that the stuff that was going on in 1996 and 1997 was small and grew far too slowly. We are now seeing a revolution because the ideas are spreading so much more quickly. Does that discount what has come before? No, absolutely not, but it doesn’t change the power of now. After all, Marx was nowhere without the ideas of Hegel, right?

In the end, I do worry about the hype-factor with a lot of these tools… and that’s why I do think it is incredibly important to keep asking "What’s good" instead of "What’s new?" It’s also why it’s so important to talk in terms of what we want to do, rather than the tools we want to use. Steve Dembo talked about this recently in his post: Shiny Happy Tools when he wrote:

So what does this mean for educators? Simply this: Don’t get married to the tools in your toolbox. A hammer is a hammer is a hammer. So what if you really like the steel one with the yellow handle? At some point that one might disappear and you better be ready to pick up a new one. Need to cut a board but can’t find a saw? Time to get creative my friend. If you are willing to concentrate on what your actual needs are, you’ll find plenty of tools at hand for about every project.

We have incredible tools at our disposal. They are fun to use, but what we need to now do is start asking ourselves the harder question — "What is that we want our students to do and be and what are the tools — Web 2.0 and traditional — that we need to help our students achieve their and our goals?"