Web 2.0, Decisions, and The Road Ahead

I've learned a lot in this class, about Web 2.0 technologies, and how Web 2.0 can support learning and instruction. I suppose that's good, considering the original purpose of the class. But I also found out something interesting about Web 2.0 that I had never really thought of before (at least not deep thought).

The world of Web 2.0 is really crowded, with many, many, many sites trying to attract users and do things better than other, similar sites. The idea behind produsage, as I came to know from the course readings, is to build a community of produsers, or hive, that creates collaboratively for the betterment of the community as a whole, leaving individuals to find their reward in contributing rather than owning the work. But there is certainly no utopia to be found on the Internet and groups still fight to be the "best" place to create produsage works, often splitting efforts, which seems to result in smaller communities with less brain power. I suppose that's in the spirit of Web 2.0 as well, as produsers are free to head in whatever direction suits them at the time.

In our class alone, we created about 50 new sites, each vying for attention from other Web 2.0 users. 50 more places are now competing among the millions of sites on the Internet, looking for the few users that may or may not find the sites useful, for a minute, for a season, or for a lifetime. At least, as Bruns and Shirkey both point out, creating the sites is relatively inexpensive and failure doesn't mean losing a life's savings on the effort. For many, like our students, using Web 2.0 is a matter of finding a place to use. For us, as leaders and teachers, we are in the business of creating those spaces, or at least organizing the choices by filtering for the students.

I am thankful to have been immersed in the technology and competing on the landscape. I'll take my lessons learned and continue ahead on the journey, where I'll, no doubt, learn a whole bunch more.

Thank you to everyone I had the pleasure of interacting with this term and thank you to Vanessa for creating a usable and useful space in which to learn. It was certainly an adventure to remember.