Twitter. Facebook. Bad poetry. It’s easy to criticize
superficial aspects of Web 2.0 and groups like the Partnership
for 21st Century Skills. But critics who point to the lowest
quality of online work fail to grasp the potential of networked
learning and the reality that it’s here to stay. Worse, they
enable those who seek to restrict student speech. Around 1436, a
German goldsmith with the multi-syllabic name of Johannes
Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg came up with a crazy idea.
That crazy idea – movable type – was responsible for a
revolution. Almost immediately, people in powerful positions
started looking for ways to control the spread of information.
Five centuries later, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina developed
Mosaic at the university of Illinois Urbana- Champaign. Mosaic
made the World Wide Web accessible for the first time to a
general audience. Shortly after that, the United States Congress
attempted to regulate content on the Internet by passing the
Communications Decency Act. Throughout the wor