What the Web is ForA version for Kids, by Kids

byThe 7th and 8th grades at Turnberry Central in Ontario and

Joseph H. Kerr in ManitobaIntroduction

Small Pieces Loosely Joined was written to explain how important the internet is these days, and what it is for. This book was originally written by a Harvard University researcher David Weinberger. It helps us to understand the big question, what is the web really for? This book was written for adults, and then this version was rewritten for kids; because kids rule the technology universe. :)

The grade 7/8’s from Turnberry Central in Ontario, along with the 7/8's from Joseph H.Kerr in Manitoba, decided to rewrite this book. We read the original version and wanted to re-write it for a school project. Since it was created in 2002, it was fairly outdated in terms of newer technology. Our two classes rewrote the kids version of this book in small groups using Google documents. We collaborated to write this version even though we live 2700 kms apart from each other.

We would like to thank our awesome teachers, Mrs. Durnin and Mr. Fisher for planning this awesome project, that wouldn’t have been possible without them. We have learned numerous new things about the web, and what the web is for.

Note: One of the reasons we were able to undertake this project is because Dr. Weinberger was generous enough in the original version to create this piece under a Creative Commons license.

We continue that with this work.

Chapter 1: What Things Are For

If you want to know what something is, you ask someone else what it is. Let’s say you don’t know what an iPad is, you might think it’s a thing that lights up and makes sounds. If you didn’t know what soccer is you might think it is some crazy people chasing a ball around. It all becomes clear when you see that the ipod of soccer ball is used for.

So then what exactly is the web used for?

When you're on the web, you use it for many things, including doing research for school projects. This is one of the things the web was made for. The web was made by Tim Berners-Lee. He made it so that scientists could easily find papers that other scientists wrote. Do you use the web for things like email or instant messaging? These are some of the things that the web is for. Tim had many ideas what the web could be used for, but you probably use it in some ways Tim never thought of.

Have you ever been tricked by a web site? You thought you were entering a contest to win easy money. For example, “If you join my contest you can win lots of money, just give your email and/or phone number.” Then you get a false phone call or spam emails telling you false information and trying to sell you junk. Or, “You are the one thousandth visitor, click here for your prize!” Then it asks for an email address, and bank or credit card information. But instead, it takes your information and uses your money. You were tricked. So yes, tricking people is also what the web is for.

Every day it seems, someone thinks up something new you can do with the Web. Families can live anywhere around the world and still see each others’ pictures. For example, if you add each other on Facebook, you can upload pictures for

them to see. Now, there are even Google glasses that you can wear to access the internet wherever you are! You can receive e-mails and even video chat with a friend. They are voice activated, so you don’t have to use your hands! There is no predicting what will be invented tomorrow or the day after that. All those future predictions are also what the Web is for.

The web is for many different things. It is for email, Facebook, Youtube, communicating with different people, iGoogle, Skype, Twitter, playing games, and looking up funny pictures on Google Images.

The web is still changing. There are over a trillion pages on the web and there are always new things, and new people being added to the web everyday. The web is used for good purposes, for example, homework and making office jobs easier. It is used for collaborating, and visiting with family. But the truth is that the web is sometimes more like a place than a thing. The web is very strange that way. You can do things on the web just like you can in a real place.

On the web, you can talk to different people, and meet even more people than you can in the real world because there are no distances to travel. With the gas prices the way they are, you wouldn’t go a long way just to meet someone new. But on the web you can go to Facebook or Twitter and meet new people easily.

There are different places on the web besides social places. For example there are places for hockey fans who want to figure out what happened to their favourite team last night. Also, there are places for kids to learn their times-tables while having fun at the same time, and even web sites for kids who need help with their homework. There's a place where authors can write a book without having to pick up a pencil. There are many places on the web, and they are as unique as the people who use them. So, if we want to understand the web, we should ask what type of place it is. And that’s a very good question!

Chapter 2: The Web and The Real World

You can think of the web sort of like a spider web. In a spider web, all of the strands are connected to other strands. One strand isn’t necessarily connected to the same strand as the one that it is connected to. Hyperlinks are the same idea. They link things together like the strands on the web.

Links can be a good thing and a bad thing. Some of the bad uses for them are to scam you into a website selling junk that says it will give you the newest games before the release date.

That is not true, and will not happen. Links are great for adding additional understanding. If the website that you are on doesn't have enough information on your topic, but has a link to a site with more info, you can go there and get the information that you need.

Links are a huge part of the web. Without links, it would be a lot harder to find new sites that you might be interested in. Say that I made a site about my favourite hockey team and posted a link to the team’s official website. That gives my viewers a ‘shortcut’ to the official website. Still, that doesn't mean that the website has a ‘shortcut’ to my site. In the real world, if you are three houses down from your friend, that means that your friend is three houses up from you. That is a concept so simple, that we would never think of it being any different. On the web, however, if you have a link to a site, it makes your site right beside theirs. But, their site is not right beside yours because they don’t necessarily have a link to your site. That’s one of the ways that the web is not like the real world.

In the real world your town can’t grow forever because of limited space. Building a new house takes up some of that space. But on the web, your site can be added to without taking up any extra space online. There is no limit to how big your site can get. In the real world, there is a maximum amount of room for people to live in, but on the web, there is no limit. Rather than taking up space, a new web page just makes the whole web bigger. An example of this is when new videos that are posted on Youtube. It expands, but never runs out of space.

In the real world, you can only have so many next door neighbours, but on the web you can have as many “neighbours” as you want. On the Web you can have as many neighbours, or links, as you want, and nobody will complain. In the real world people would complain that there are too many

houses and that the neighborhood is too full. With the amount of pages and social sites on the web, connecting with others is simple.

It’s extraordinary how people connect with the internet. Online, you can connect to anyone in the world, through websites, social networking sites and links. You could be in a small town like Wingham, Ontario or in Snow Lake, Manitoba and still be able to connect through the internet.

Hyperlinks are like the strings that hold the web together. They connect the pages together through common interests. In the real world you can only see what is around you; friends, close family, lakes, hills, valleys, and buildings. What you can see is what humans did or what nature did. But on the web you can see what humans care about. We care by linking to things that we like and dislike. This way, it shows what we care about. The web is made out of humans caring about things together.

Chapter 3: Being Together

The web is a place where we can come together and connect with others. We can be together by chatting with others on Facebook or sending a tweet. The connections we make on the web are important. We can connect in new ways with people we otherwise wouldn’t know. These are all new ways of connecting.

By connecting together on the web, we can do new things with people from all around the world. On Facebook you can chat, joke around, share photos, and videos. You can share a picture of your new kittens to your relatives anywhere around the world. It’s obvious that the web has made new and easier ways for us to be together.

Let’s say that you were part of a hockey card collectors club that meets at your local recreation centre every Tuesday. At the meeting, everyone brings a card that they would like to show everyone else. At the end of the meeting, kids can come look at each other’s cards and make trades. But what if there was an easier, more efficient, and all around better way to be together?

Well there is a better way to be together. For example, on Facebook, you can show a card anytime you want. It’s called a Facebook group. Anyone who has an internet connection can join up. They can share wherever they want and whenever they want. You upload a picture of the card that you want to share with your group. You can post it into the group’s page. That way everyone will see it if they go to the group page. You can show an unlimited amount of cards whenever you want to. If people want to make a trade, you just set up a time and place and you make the trade. If the person lives in another country, you can mail it to them. Now you have a virtual club that is faster, more efficient and more fun to show off your cards!

Or, say you want to just buy or sell some cards. Instead of going to a store, you could just go onto a site like Kijiji and see if there are any cards listed that you like. Kijiji is a site where people categorize items that they are selling. You can also search what you want to buy. If you find something that you like, you get in touch with the owner and you either meet or get the item shipped to you. Ebay is a similar site to Kijiji. On ebay, you can bid on things, such as your hockey cards, like a virtual auction. You can buy good cards for a cheap price and just get them shipped!

Trading and meeting online is a faster, more efficient and a much more fun way to get the job done!

The differences between meeting with friends in real life and online are huge. For example, in reality, you have to go to a specific place to meet up. Planning it all out also needs to be done. If you are having an online meeting you can be anywhere in the world. Using a program such as Skype, people from different parts of the world can meet to discuss a common interest.

However, when you meet up with a friend in reality compared to meeting with a friend online, you are bound to talk differently. The major factor to this is because online, you can’t see facial expressions or body language, which can make something sound different. Without expressions to back up what you’re saying or implying, online communication can be very difficult to understand. You might also say things online that you wouldn’t normally say,

to get reactions. For example, in real life you might say, “I like the Washington Capitals, they’re defensive playing style is great.” But on the web, you’re more likely to put, “The Caps are going all the way ‘cuz they have the greatest players that no one can stand up to!” You are more likely to get a reaction from somebody this way.

This happens often on the web just to get a reaction. Also, sometimes you would write in italics to make your writing stand out. For example, “Everyone in the whole world!” stands out better than, “Everyone in the whole world!” To show emotion, you may also use capital letters and a lot of punctuation. For example, “I

AM VERY ANGRY!!!” Online you can be a very different person than who you are in reality.

On the web, you may sound different than what you would sound like in the real world. In a music chat room, you may seem serious about your favourite band/artist. If someone isn’t looking at something from your point of view, you type some words in capitals, and type other words in lowercase. In another chat room, you may type in all lowercase letters because you don’t want to seem rude or unfriendly.

Proper grammar is also important in a chatroom if you want to appear intelligent or seem serious. You do this because no one knows who you are on the web, so you can make yourself appear different. We also have social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr that let people recognize us by our profile pictures, to give people a sense of who we are. Even with a picture of ourselves for people to see, our personality can still be different on the web. If you think about the differences we've looked at, they're actually differences in time, space, and who we are.

Time: It’s Friday and you just found out an exciting fact about hockey cards. You’ll have to wait until the next meeting to tell the real hockey card club. If you follow the proper twitter hashtag, or joined the Hockey Card group on Facebook, people could read it right away. People can respond when they want, and whenever they can. The discussions aren’t imprisoned to that

Friday. They will always be there and you can jump in or out whenever you want.

Space: In the real world, you live halfway across the world and I live the same distance from you, so we don't see each other very much, Tyson lives thousands of kilometres away in Wingham and Sophia lives another few thousand kilometres away in Snow Lake. Real-world space separates us. On the web, we are not separated by space. In fact we’re all joined by email, hashtags, Facebook, Twitter, and especially by hyperlinks.

Who We Are: Because space makes it hard to move around, we live in one place and we are the same person day in and day out. But, we can jump in and out of the web, trying out being different types of people. The self we sometimes feel stuck with in the real world gets unstuck on the web.

If the time, space and who we are is different on the web, then it’s the most remarkable place in the entire world.

Chapter 4: The Web Place

Someone who’s never been on the internet may think it’s all bad because of people losing money from online banking and from getting their credit card numbers stolen. Even though the internet can be a good place, it can be really bad too.

A caveman might think that when you talk about the web, that you mean a spider web, not the internet. He probably wouldn't understand what the point of the web is, what sites are, and why they are important. If you wanted to show him why the web was a good thing, what would you show him? We’d show him Twitter and Facebook and how we chat with friends after school, and he’d probably say the web sounds pretty useful, if he could talk. We would show him bullying prevention and cancer research websites and that the web shows that we do really care for each other.

We are at our best while caring for each other and the web is a place that shows us doing just that; caring. That’s why it’s important that we know what the web is. It’s a community of people who care. There are scams, viruses, and some bad people on the internet, but there are bad people in the world too. The web is worth it.

Paper clips connect things. But is that the only thing that has the ability to do that? No; the web is a whole other universe that connects people in all different kinds of ways. The web is a way that you and I can connect to one another. Without the web, we would not know our long-distance friends, or some of our family. The web is an important part in everyone’s lives. For example, when a soldier is overseas and wants to connect with his or her spouse, children or other family, you can use the internet to use Skype, video chat or just message them using Facebook or other sites.

As the internet ages, it becomes easier and better to use. Ten years ago, we couldn’t do half the things we can do on it now. Almost everyone uses the internet each day, and even if your parents say it’s bad for you, you’re probably connecting with a lot of people. If it’s for homework, study purposes, or just for fun, the internet lets us connect with people in a short time.

You wouldn’t believe how many people, clubs, websites and so much more are waiting for you on the web. Sometimes you have to be that first paper clip to get things started. For example, starting a forum on the Idea Hive or a document on Google Docs. You just have to connect.

There is something very important about living close to people. We get to know our neighbours really well over the time when we live next to them. We may run into them everyday while going to work or school and be able to start the day off good by having a little chat. On rainy, boring days, you may get call from your friend saying, “Hey, wanna hang out at my house?” Since you live close together in the same neighbourhood, you can just walk down to their house. It can turn a boring day by yourself into a gaming marathon. It can be hard sometimes to meet someone new in the real world so we are stuck hanging out with the same people everyday.

The web makes it extremely easy to talk to someone new and get to know them. We can chat in chatrooms, over email, Facebook, and we can talk using video chat on Skype. Classes across the globe can connect using these programs and work together everyday. Google Drive is a great way to do assignments collaboratively. There are some ups and downs to this. You may not get to know each other as well as the people that you are with everyday. But, its just as fun talking to them. These kind of connections are important to us in different ways.

In reality, we don’t really associate with anyone we don’t know, because not very many people get to travel all that often. But the people we meet on the web live all over the world. However, when it comes to the web, it is a totally different place, because it isn’t confined to a specific area. The people you meet online usually have the same interests as you, because you all go to websites that you are interested in and that creates a special bond between you. For example, your friend at school may not like hockey cards, while you love them, but online you can find somebody who will like them as much as you do. In the real world the people we know don’t all have the same interests, but online you and the people you meet will probably care for the same things.

The world as we know it is actually split in two; the real world, and the online world where you and your friends all have the same interests. These worlds are divided, split up, but still interconnected. The web is where we connect and care for each other.

Our online and offline realities are very different, and both have their ups and downs. The real world forces us to live in a certain area, but the web is open, massive, with all of its knowledge. The web is where we can connect with people who have similar interests, with people who don’t live near us, have the same religion as we do, and who might have a different lifestyle or culture than we do. The web allows us to care for knowledge, interests and ideas together, which makes us better at being people.

And that is really what the web is for.

THE END

This version of What the Web is For was rewritten by two classes of grade seven and eight students. These students, even though they live 2700 kms apart from each other work in one classroom, the Idea Hive. The Idea Hive is a collaboration between Clarence Fisher from Snow Lake, MB and Heather Durnin from Wingham, ON. The students in the Idea Hive for the 2011 - 2012 school year are:

JOSEPH H KERR SCHOOL

Grade 7

Lyndon BartlettAngel CannKassie ChristiansonTayla CousinsAlexandra HornyakMercedes LongpreKash MelnickMaidsyn NeufeldEmily PickLogan FulmoreZach RobertsJordan SassWesley SnowKatie SpruytKelly ThomasRiley Feldschun

Grade 8

Sully BurliKole ChristiansonSydney CoulsonAlexander FisherCassidy GibbonsJoan GogalChantal LaminmanCameron MercereauRiley ParsonsJulianne PerretErin SlobodaPolina Romanovna

TURNBERRY PUBLIC

Grade 7

Kasey AttenboroughBrayden CarterKarissa DraperTegan GriceAnthony HebertLogan HemeonSpencer HodginsCameron HoskinsBianca Knop Melissa MastWilliam ParkJacob PeelJeff PewtressPreston ScottSavannah StaceyCassidy StevensonDylan WalkerTaylor WalkerNoah Young

Grade 8

Cassidy Adams-CookIsaac ErringtonShelby GreenJaydin HammerAlyssa HuffmanEthan JohnstonTanner LewisTanner McArthurEdison PeelBrad PewtressTyler PhamDylan SchellJustin SchillSockett, Kori