Teaching Web 2.0, part 1

The theme of my Advanced Composition class is not technology or user-generated web, but it is a huge component. The theme is actually "Identity and Community," and under that umbrella, we're looking at the ways in which identity and community are constructed and expressed via electronic communication (I know I've described this before, but I thought a recap was in order). We're using blogs and message boards and the class is almost paperless, so the technology is in use all the time, but we're starting a four-week unit next week in which we'll study specifically web communication and virtual communities. And I'm showing this video.

The concept that underlies Web 2.0 is not exactly new. The internet has been connecting people and allowing people to create their own content for a very long time. What the video points out, though, is that those services that are being called Web 2.0 now have removed the need to understand coding and programming and "how" technology works by making user-friendly, accessible programs that allow people to put whatever they want online without any advanced technological knowledge. Those kinds of programs have also been around for a while, but now they are pervasive. Everybody's doing it. And while the questions of authorship and copyright and even relationships that the video's ending alludes to are also not really new--they were around long before Flickr and MySpace and Blogger--the exponential growth of Web 2.0 has brought those questions to the radar of many more people who don't necessarily identify themselves as artists, authors, or academics.

So what about teaching? I selected this topic for two reasons. It is timely and interesting to students, which hopefully will help them to enjoy the class and encourage them to put more effort into their writing assignments. And it presents intriguing questions about composition. With my theme, we are focused more on the first part. I'm asking students to be self-conscious about their use of user-generated web and to really consider its function and potential in their lives. Based on their blogs, I think that a lot of them do not realize how prominent the internet is in their personal lives, and I suspect that is because it is so commonplace that they find it unremarkable. I asked them to blog about their use of the internet, and several of them immediately stated that they could not live without it. They are plugged in all the time and feel anxious when they are away from it. But many others were reluctant to make such a statement, adamant that they are not "addicted" (a word used frequently among them) to the internet. Their entries almost ran on a pattern--They would insist from the beginning that they don't use the computer that much, mostly just for school. Then they would start to list the things they did online regularly, and the lists became lengthy, even as they continued to insist that they were not that "attached" to it. It went something like this: I don't use the internet much and I just don't understand why people are so attached to it and spend hours on the computer. But I use it all the time to do school work. And to talk to friends and family. And post pictures. And I have to check Facebook every day. But I don't really use it that much.

Issues of composition and authorship are not on their minds (except maybe for the guy who writes music and posts his songs online). Whether they are conscious of it or not, they are invested in the internet as a social tool (and secondarily, I think, as a learning tool). I've been easing them into thinking about it critically, and next week we're hitting it hard as they start writing papers that analyze virtual communities (primary research--yea!). Which brings me to the second big issue--composition. But not today. I don't like long blog posts, and I just wrote one, so now it's time to stop.

The next installment will come soon. And I will respond to the "Academia 2.o" video, which is really about something different.