My approach to this issue is to try to break free of either/or thinking about whether Web 2.0 is good or bad for society and/or education and focus on context of use and conditions of value. Such an ecological approach considers how the affordances of a particular medium might help people achieve specific purposes or address particular pedagogical goals under certain circumstances, while also considering its limitations. For example, if people understand how to conduct an efficient web search and evaluate the reliability of sources, then the benefits of having access to the thoughts, ideas, and creative achievements of millions of newly self-published authors may outweigh the challenges of sifting through them to find the worthiest ones. And the potential benefits of being able to interact so easily with people and their ideas without restrictions on time or distance are enormous.

The social web can offer a great deal of value as a learning environment, under the right conditions. Web 2.0 media such as blogs, wikis, and threaded discussions can help developing writers build a sense of audience and purpose as they interact in writing with others around their ideas. In the context of effective instruction, this sort of authentic written communication can potentially help students learn how to write better than typical classroom composition activities in which the sole purpose of writing is to prove competence to a teacher. However, Web 2.0 media do not inherently provide instruction; in order to achieve such results, teachers need to guide students toward learning the rhetoric and applying the conventions of academic discourse, with clear expectations and reliable accountability mechanisms. They also need to provide writing tasks and prompts that engage students in genuine authorship involving critical and creative thinking about substantive issues, works of literature or art, or other meaningful content that has relevance to students and to society at large. Discussing the value of Web 2.0 for authors as well as audiences, considering both challenges and opportunities, essentially reframes the debate about Keen’s polemical argument. Rather than listing “why we like (or do not like) the social web,” it might be even more compelling to explain “when we like the social web and why.”

I believe that authorship is an important vehicle for learning. Teachers often ask students to write, but such activities do not always engage students in true authorship.

This concept map that I authored with MindMeister elaborates on what I mean…
[Mind map is interactive...Click and drag to center map and mouse over gray dots for additional notes.]

Everyone is creating and sharing digital compositions from anywhere at any time, using constantly evolving tools and rules, because we are inherently driven toward the edge of possibility.

Who – Everyone
Today’s authors comprise a worldwide peer-to-peer network of everyday people, free of editorial gatekeepers and restrictive production and publication technologies.

What – Creating and sharing digital compositions
Today’s authors can create dynamic, interactive, multimedia compositions to express anything on their minds to any audience. Digital compositions are dynamic because they can easily be modified in either form or content by author and/or audience. Interactive digital compositions allow audiences to direct their own experience and/or contribute to the composition in some way. Multimedia digital compositions can include any combination of text, images, audio, video, or animations. In fact, the new “text” is the multimedia text.

Where – Anywhere
Through ubiquitous computers and Internet, anyone can create and publish digital compositions from almost anywhere on the planet, and those compositions can be instantaneously accessed from almost anywhere on the planet, even if author and audience are miles apart. The only tools needed are a personal computer with an Internet connection.

When – Anytime
People can create, communicate, publish, and update digital compositions whenever they want. Unlike print publishing, digital publishing allows an author to make changes on a continuous basis. Web-based documents remain under the author’s control, yet audiences always have access to the most recent version of a digital composition.

Why - Because we are inherently driven toward the edge of possibility
People are innately intelligent, social, expressive beings. They are fundamentally predisposed to think, interact, create, and communicate through any means possible. Those means are now in constant flux, converging, diverging, and otherwise evolving, as authors and audiences alike better understand their affordances. The medium and the message are interacting like never before, both shaping and being shaped by each other. Categories are growing harder to define, and lines that were once clear are getting blurrier all the time. Such changes are a natural outcome of the human condition.

How – With constantly evolving tools and rules
Most anyone now has practical, affordable access to flexible, easy-to-use power tools for thinking and communicating (e.g., e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, wikis, online discussion forums, chat rooms, social networking sites, shared virtual environments) that capitalize upon the convergence of digital media. Each new communication tool engenders its own rhetoric, and society is constantly developing new discourses, social norms, and participation structures for digital interactions.

How might these changes impact teaching and learning?