Well, we all know how cool the Internet is and you all just found some great resources to help your teaching.
But what if a new Internet came out that was even better? So much better, in fact, that it's creators say it will revolutionize the way we do everything --just like the original internet did?
Well, it's happening. It's called Internet2, or the Semantic Web. I really don't understand it completely myself, but it uses a new language called XML instead of HTML, and the basic idea is this: Right now computers can search through webpages and find words, but they don't know what they mean. For example, If you search for Civil War, Google will find webpages that say Civil War alot. But what if the computer knew what you meant by Civil War, knew what kinds of pages you wanted, and what other words are related to Civil War? What if the computer knew what words meant and how they relate to other ideas? "Semantics" basically means "the meaning of words and symbols."
Anyway, like I said, I don't understand how they're going to make it work exactly, but I know that they are really excited about it. If you want to learn more about this, read this interview with Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the Internet. You can also look up Tim Berners-Lee and the Semantic Web in Wikipedia.
If you can catch the vision of what Berners-Lee is trying to do, what kinds of opportunities could this present in education? How would this impact research and learning and access to information?
