Information in the 21st Century

I'm listening tonight for the second time, to a podcast done at the recent NECC conference. There is a panel of 4 or 5 people talking about Web 2.0 aka the Read/Write web. One of the points made by David Warlick, in response to a question about the future of web 2.0 in the classroom, is that, on the web information flows without containers.

So, as I thought about that, I wanted to see if I could create some sort of visual about the flow of information. I decided on this one as a way of describing what's been my experience over the past few weeks in reading several blogs, which connect their thoughts/content to other blogs, which lead me to particular resources, which intersects with something that someone else mentioned...you get the picture I think!



By contrast, the traditional classroom presents information in containers as if this is the only information we have to use or have access to. My guess is that these "containers" would be textbooks, worksheets, maps, globes, the teacher...