Thursday, April 12, 2007

Web 3, Classroom 3 and Grandma's Tomato Chutney

A contest on Read/WriteWeb asked for reader definitions of Web3. The article has a useful summary of what Web 1 and Web2 are as well.
For instance: "Hindsight: Web 1.0 turned into a broadcast medium. It was all about them. A case of industrial age thinking applied to a new landscape."
My take on this is as follows. The community is talking about Classroom 2 but in reality vocational training has at its heart an industrial model of education based on the transmission of the knowledge of an individual teacher or master to non experts, originally apprentices, all now called learners. In many cases this is being challenged by the way expertise that has always existed in the community is bubbling to the surface as a result of the social web applications that now abound. As a simple example, good chefs have always realised some of the best recipes were created by someone's Grandmother. In Classroom 2 it seems Grandma might get some recognition at last. In Classroom 3 it looks like the user gets to decide whose Grandmother has the best Tomato Chutney and talk to her direct.

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