Unraveling the Mystery of Web 2.0

Today, while searching for a topic to blog about I came across an old website. For those who are "digital immigrants", or are "digital natives" (Crook, 2012) that happen to be born during the time when the field was burgeoning, can truly appreciate the development that occurred in the last two decades.

If you had asked me about 6 months ago how social media can help one learn, I would be out of my depth trying to provide a response. For me, social media was just that -- a medium to help you be social . Just looking at my interactions with friends and with social media, they were largely sharing of stories, photographs, or playing of little games. I would not have considered that learning.

As a fairly avid user and consumer of the web, I have come across many tools and sites. But I think many would agree that are just too many to try them all. Instead, we just know of  them, and that is about it. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I came across a new function within an old tool.

As this week draws to a close, I must admit that I still have no firm handle on my readings and topics of this week. Between 'Copyright' and 'Creative Commons'; and 'Folksonomy' and 'Ontology', I knew I was in for a tough time getting through the content. And unlike a happy movie, I cannot say that I came out on top.

This week, I explored a new content curation tool called 'Scoop.It!' and here is what I found...

When I was an undergraduate, while I understood what intellectual property was, the naive me could not fully appreciate why we needed it. Fast forward 10 years, and I understand the financial implications of rights ownership. And if like me, you get confused about the difference between copyright, creative commons, and how much you can use before it is considered Fair Use, this might help you.

In the last week or so, I have had several posts about privacy. There continues to exist this spectrum between thinking that privacy online should be actively pursued, and that of privacy cannot exist in a world with social media and therefore the users should be the ones that watch what they post.