If it ain't Web 2.0 it will die ....

A couple of months ago I attended an open day for IB teachers in Switzerland hosted at ZIS. The person doing the SMARTBoard demo made the above statement, which I took with a pinch of salt at the time. However a few weeks later I went to Wengen for the IT retreat and we were all asked to put together a short 5 minute presentation on any subject we wanted. This phrase was still ringing in my head, so I decided to make it the basis of my presentation. At first I started off being very flippant (do we really need more blogs? Do we really need to read what all our friends had for breakfast?) but the more I thought about it, the more I realised just now much I do use Web 2.0 tools. The week before going to Wengen a tragedy had struck - one of my son's friends died very suddenly of a rare blood disease. She had just gone to university in Munich - all the students in his class who graduated this year were in far flung corners of the Earth, yet within a matter of hours they were all united in this grief and all supporting each other. This is how 18 year olds communicate. This is their future, therefore I guess it is ours too.