The Web...Powerful?

The web is potentially powerful because it constantly changes. It seems to do everything we want AND there seems to be an army of people out there inventing new things we didn't yet know we wanted it to do. Once they are there, though, we can't imagine life without them. To talk old school, most people never thought there was anything wrong with music stores, but now we don't need them and don't really want them. To be a little more modern, I don't personally know anyone who had an overwhelming desire for facebook, but now that it's here I know quite a few people who can't imagine life without it.

I stressed potentially above because it all depends on how it is used. Cheap video cameras had the potential to be hugely powerful because they enabled people of all ages and classes around the world to tell their own stories. In the end, most people made boring home movies that no one ever wanted to watch. Facebook isn't powerful just because people use it to communicate with their friends. The last US presidential campaign, however, showed that, harnessed with a goal and a vision, it can be HUGE. When giant corporations own the major digital tools, you know they don't have societal change in mind for their offerings. They see a market and a profit.

To continue the above example, displacing video stores and music stores isn't powerul in and of itself - it's disruptive. It changes the way people shop but it isn't necessarily a societal change. Of course I am playing devil's advocate to some extent here, but the real power of the web is in the change it can generate - not in modifications to people's habits. People spend a lot of time sitting watching videos on youtube but that's really a modification to how people spend time. Creating videos for youtube, however, begins to unlock the power of the web.

My reason for embracing technology in the classroom, is to help students figure out how to use the power of the web. As I mentioned in a previous post, I want our students to go beyond the Cumbio's of the world.

We have to see the web the way some people have seen the printed word. If the ultimate achievement of printing presses had been Archie comics, it wouldn't have been much of a force for change. But we have seen great literature, drama, political treatises, speeches and ideas immortalized in print. Most of the words out there may be long forgotten memories (or drivel) but the others have sparked debate and change. The web can go far beyond that because it can harness almost every media form.

That's why technology needs to be in schools.