In his book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, Jonathan Zittrain compares and contrasts the generative and non-generative use of the Internet, and how decisions that are made now will influence the future of the net.  My own experience with the Internet began in 1979 with Compuserve, BRS After Dark, and BitNet.  With Compuserve and BRS (Bibliographical Retrieval Services) I could access data bases to obtain information that these two services made available to subscribers.  BRS After Dark, which you could access after 6:00 PM was cheaper at night.  But these services didn’t allow you to be creative or innovative, and indeed as Zittrain points out, Compuserve did not open its system to programmers or innovators, but instead relied own its own internal decision making to decide what content, and how their system could be used.  Clearly non-generative system.  However, with Bitnet, I was able to logon to the Internet and communicate with colleagues at distant locations, thus introducing many of us to the use of email as an important part of the architecture of the Internet.

The Internet as we know it today, is open and flexible, and in Zittrain’s words, “a generative system.”   With a PC, anyone can participate or operate over the Internet, and in Zittrain’s conception at different conceptual levels which he describes in a hourglass design.  At the bottom (or physical layer) are the wires or airwaves over which data passes.  At the top is the application layer in which we can perform specific tasks such as send email, use the web, make a phone call.  In the middle is the protocol layer, defining the way data will flow over the Internet.  What is important about this model is that people can work on different layers without concern for those working at other layers.  The Net is a powerful way for technology to be used.  Those who like to tinker can go about their work without being concerned about others.  If someone develops a new application, website or blog it will work without having to know about transmission speeds, modems or broadband.  

Hourglass architecture of the Internet by Steve Deering

The second aspect of the hourglass structure is the shape.  Note that the Net is supported by the “narrow” Internet Protocol, (the IP).  The broad upper and lower layers represent the early innovators’ notion that new applications and other innovations would be unknown and would emerge as the Internet progressed.  Zittrain points out that the same quality of innovativeness exists in traditional PC architecture.  Developers of PC operating systems left the code open enabling others to revise how a computer operates.  An analogous hourglass for the PC is shown below.

Hourglass Architecture of the Internet after Zittrain

The generative nature of the Internet combined with PCs can lead to a creative and innovative teaching and learning environment.  In fact, by integrating the Internet and the PC, teachers have involved students in content projects (seen as above the top layer in the Internet hourglass), many of which are innovative and creative.  Mike Dias and I have described many of these innovations in our forthcoming book, The Art of Teaching Science (Routledge, 2009) and we use the concept “emerging pedagogical practices,” to summarize the notion.  Emerging practices describe a paradigm that made students active in, and responsible for their own learning, were involved in cooperative or project-based learning, sometimes engaging them in the search for information, at othertimes the creation of information and knowledge.  The generative model described by Zittrain is important in understanding how we might continue to use the Internet in teaching science at the secondary level. 

In later posts, we’ll explore some further ideas.  In the meantime, what are your experiences with using the Internet in a generative way?  Do you think our classrooms can be environments that foster generative thinking?