Web 2.0 and New Literacies

Over the last few years the Internet has been transformed through numerous Web 2.0 applications. It has become predominantly ‘social web’ and a platform for easy digital publishing. Millions of the Internet users are nowadays empowered to engage with Web 2.0 technologies in activities such as entertainment, content publishing, and socializing. These technologies open a spectrum of opportunities for productive applications in formal activities in contexts of learning and working. Productive applications of these technologies require certain skills that are not developed in typical schools. In order to prepare students for Web 2.0-literate world outside of the school, curriculum needs to emphasize certain emerging technology-related literacies. Otherwise they will remain peripheral to professional lives. Unless school prepares students for the relevant world, there will be growing differences between these who can productively use contemporary tools and those who cannot. This will ultimately lead to a division between the contemporary world’s literates and illiterates. This presentation explores a number of emerging literacies (e.g., tool literacy, social networking literacy, visual literacy), explores a range of Web 2.0 applications and provides arguments for needs for their curriculum integrations.