Web 2.0 - Future Classic Video

What does the average teacher need to know about the Web, Bogs, Tags, XML or RSS?

Michael Wesch, an assistant professor at Kansas State University, provides The Machine is Us/ing Us as a convincing 5 minute video that illustrates the above acronyms. Yet it does more than that.

Sure, those who have witnessed Web history from its birth will enjoy seeing it replayed, but for the typical person, the video highlights the cultural shifts that the Web and Web 2.0 usher in. For those of us raised on reruns of I Love Lucy and Top 40 AM radio, the "everything" that is now available - on call - is radically opposite to what we have been brought up expecting. Yet it's the air waves our teenagers breathe.

As a classroom activity, why not watch the video together and discuss:

1. How we use the Web?
2. What the Web means to us?

The video concludes by suggesting, "We need to rethink a few things..." Wesch offers some examples, but how about something like, "how these Web 2.0 applications shift learning from the factory model to that of an open source mashup?"

If you want to spend more time with the text of the video, you can read it. You can also download YouTube videos and save them as .flv (flash video) files that can be viewed offline.

If the video gets you or students intrigued, take a look at Wesch's second draft of the video and the "Spot Sets" others have added to it.