As part of a summer series on Web 2.0 in education, ACTE interviews Steve Hargadon, project director for the Consortium for School Networking K-12 Open Technologies Initiative and founder of Classroom 2.0, a social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and education. Hargadon talks about Web 2.0, or the read/write or participatory Web, and how it is leading to a fundamental shift in our world and in education. He also shares online resources and discusses student safety on the Internet and how to manage information overload.

For anyone new to Web 2.0—and don’t worry, you’re not alone—here are definitions of some of the terms we’ll be using in this podcast.

• A social network is a group of people who meet in an online space, often to participate on message boards and share resources. Classroom 2.0 is an example of a niche social network, while Facebook and MySpace are very broad social networks.
• A wiki is an easy to edit Web site where anyone can add to or correct the information. The most famous example of this is Wikipedia.
• Second Life is a virtual world; it looks like a video game, but participants are actually doing normal life activities such as going to work and buying a house.
• Social bookmarking is a way for you to organize online information into categories and to rate online information.

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