In the early stages of web 2.0 a number of free resources were available to educators for a year or so and once teachers were hooked and dependent on them would begin charging a fee for the service. I was convinced this was their business strategy. Attain widespread adoption, get teachers dependent then charge for the service. For this reason I rarely recommended these tools because I felt they would be gone in a few months.
Over the last year or so I've become a little less skeptical and was hoping we were past this kind of tactic. Our current world wide financial crisis however may bring an end to our web 2.0 free ride.
Read this recent Generations YES Blog entry and let me know your thoughts. What's the possibility that the web 2.0 services we're enjoying will fade away because of a lack of funding?
Window Project to display my heirloom ornaments
13 years ago
2 comments:
This is something I've wondered about as well. It seems like sites that use advertising for their revenue will be more likely to continue offering their services to schools for free. The ones that don't may fall by the wayside.
I have thought about the same thing. This class, for instance, is full of free stuff...blogger, animoto, the avatars, flickr, wordle...the list could go on. I often wonder why all of this is free, and even though I am glad it is, I wonder how long it will stay that way. Don't they have some kind of overhead costs???
Post a Comment