Facebook and wikis and blogs, oh my!

So classes started on Monday. My first class -- Analysis and Design of Multimedia/Hypermedia Environments -- I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my instructor wants everyone to start a Facebook profile. She has also established a class wiki to share general information, class resources, and serve as a document repository for our group projects. She wants us to contribute a few times to a class blog. As you can see, we are exploring Web 2.0, and she is taking the approach of -- we can't talk about Web 2.0 unless we do Web 2.0. All I can do is thank Nan W. for pushing me to start a Facebook profile over the summer! I am also glad that I have worked with a wiki before and started this blog before classes began.

Web 2.0 is an interesting animal. Here are a few clips that try to get to the meat of the Web 2.0 idea.

Web 2.0
Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

A friend recently blogged about an interesting impact of the Web 2.0 culture. The creator of Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us, Professor Michael Wesch, recently lead a cultural anthropology class at Kansas State University through a digital ethnography of YouTube. See their YouTube project site. I find the idea of digital ethnography fascinating and would love to explore the subject further.