What+is+Web+2.0?

What is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is more of a concept than a technology. Or, Web 2.0 is a bundle of ideas and tools and technologies that radically change the way the World Wide Web works.

In the "old" days, information on the web was a one-way street -- you went to a web page, and read what someone else wanted you to see.

The radical concept behind Web 2.0 is that you are a **//creator//** as well as a member of the audience (or, in marketplace terms, you are a producer as well as a consumer). So Web 2.0 sites and tools provide a way for you to add comments, add and even modify content, share your discoveries, and make your contributions to the world web community.

Some examples of Web 2.0 technologies:

Blogs Wikis RSS feeds Social networking Social bookmarking Shared documents

Here is one example of Web 2.0 at work. It is a link to a video on [|TeacherTube] site. TeacherTube features educational videos. Unlike [|YouTube], TeacherTube is not blocked by the CPS firewall (so it is available to users at CPS schools)

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(Check out the video to get a sense of the amazing technological changes taking place.)

Below is an another example of Web 2.0 at work. The section below is an "RSS feed", where RSS stands for "real simple syndication". Every time an update is made to Randy Hansen's Web 2.0 Workshop group in diigo, a social bookmarking site, the latest updates will show up below.

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Here's what's going on. [|diigo] is a social bookmarking site, where users collect links to web resources they have found useful. Users, in this case Randy Hansen, an instructor at National-Louis University, can create a "group" of users who share that interest, and they will see any links that Randy finds that he thinks are of interest to group members (in this case, people who are interested in Web 2.0). This wiki includes special instructions to look at Randy's Web 2.0 diigo group and see if anything new has appeared, and if so, show it on this page. Randy has found and evaluated the links, so he is fulfilling the //role// of the //creator// here because he made the effort to select links he thinks are worthwhile). I (jd) am also playing the role of the creator by adding his content to this page. If you add comments or edit this page, you are playing the //active// role of //creator// (or //author// or //producer// or //subject//). The line between author and audience is blurred or completely erase.