Web 2.0 Skills

References to “technology training” often summon traditional tech skills such as how to use Powerpoint and Word or how to build a blog or website.  But participation in Web 2.0–the second phase of the Internet marked by the explosion of user-generated and interactive content–increasingly demands a whole a new set of non-technical skills from users. As social movement activists we need to be searching for the right mix of hard and soft technology skills to best train our organizers and members.

The folks over at MIT’s Project on New Media Literacies are trying to think through the Web 2.0 skills gap and how to best equip people with the “social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape”. In the video below, members of the NML team share their thoughts and perspectives on what’s needed for full engagement in today’s participatory culture.  First here’s a quick summary of some of what they think is required:

• Judgment – the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
• Play – the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
• Appropriation – the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
• Multitasking – the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details
• Networking – the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
• Negotiation – the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms
• Collective Intelligence – the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal.

A full list of skills is available here.  And here’s the video: