17 Jul, 2007
The Next Big Thing: Why Web 2.0 Insn’t Enough
Posted by: Jeff VanDrimmelen In: General| Social Web
This morning I came across a great article on Tech Consumer entitled: “The Next Big Thing: Why Web 2.0 Isn’t Enough” by Marion Jensen. Marion says that the “next big thing is…location, location, location.” He goes on to explain:
The next big thing is to organize, tag, and link information to a specific location. Think of the last time you were at a national park. It’s a very good possibility that the only information you had about the park fit on a tri-fold paper that you picked up at the visitor’s station. In the information age, how is this acceptable?
Instead, imagine visiting the park where hundreds of visitors have linked information to specific locations. You have the architect of the visitor’s center who tells you the history of the building. As you move around the park you access information provided by geologists, geographers, botanists, biologists, environmental scientists, conservationists, hiking enthusiasts, bikers, etc. etc. etc. The information is useful because it’s relevant to the location. And it becomes manageable in the same way that the 10s of millions of pictures on flickr have become manageable, through tagging.
If I’m driving down a dirt road, I can access the Internet, enter in the keywords, “eat, roast beef sandwich’. The next time I pass within 5 miles of an Arby’s, my device let’s me know. Or if I have my mountain bike on the back of my car, I search for the keywords ‘mountain bike trails’. Every time I come within a few miles of a trail, my GPS device alerts me.
Now imagine this idea applied to education. More and more students have mobile devices and they are getting better and better too. As more and more people look to mobile devices for information, that information will be easier found on mobile devices. Teach students to access that information and use the devices for good (not just chatting 
). Then imagine going on a field trip. Each student could have their own access to tons of information.
What other ideas to you see? What did you like about this article? Share your ideas in the comments.
