![The Ontology of the Web (Or, Why I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Learning Standards) [DMLcentral]](https://dougbelshaw.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/The-Ontology-of-the-Web-Or-Why-I-Learned-to-Stop-Worrying-and-Love-Learning-Standards-DMLcentral-2013-09-17-10-19-20-280x150.png)
My latest post for DMLcentral is now up.
Entitled The Ontology of the Web (Or, Why I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Learning Standards), I manage to cram in references to Clay Shirky, William James, Plato, and John Dewey into just over a thousand words.
At the beginning of 2013 the Mozilla Foundation announced its intention to work with the community to create a new learning standard for Web Literacy. I’m delighted to say that we’re well on course to release v1.0 of that standard at the Mozilla Festival in London at the end of October. In this post I want to give an overview of how I went from being initially skeptical to an enthusiastic project lead – all because of something I learned about ontology from Clay Shirky.
You can read the post in full here.
I’ve only just got round to watching a TED talk from Clay Shirky entitled How the Internet will (one day) transform government:
(no video? click here!)
Shirky, as ever, makes some really good points but the key for me is the way how well he explains the significance of Git version control software – perhaps most commonly used via Github. It has democratic features built into its core.
Watch the video through to the end and you’ll understand why we at Mozilla are trying to create a generation of Webmakers – people who can tinker with the web and, by extension, engage in participative, democratic activity.
Update
I forgot to mention that you can get a badge for trying Git!
I’ve recently finished reading Clay Shirky‘s excellent book Here Comes Everybody. If you’re new to social media it explains why it’s important; if you’re not, it equips you to explain its importance to others. A must read!
Below are some quotations from the book in a Flickr set that will eventually grow to include quotations from other authors… :-p
