Bit by BitTorrent | The Village Green

Bit by BitTorrent March 27, 2008

Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Tools.
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When keeping track of all the new technology, or Web 2.0 specifically, it isn’t an easy task. One technology that I haven’t mentioned at all, but that fits the idea of the end users being in charge of the content, is BitTorrent. What is BitTorrent? In my mind, it is a distributed file sharing protocol. But what does that mean? Andy Carvin posted a question on Twitter asking for analogies for BitTorrent, and several people posted some very good ones that help explain what it is.

I like to think of BitTorrent as ‘the network is my hard drive.’ In other words, the location of the information isn’t as important as my access to it. What I wonder about is how BitTorrent can impact education. Imagine a district or school or classroom that isn’t concerned with having all of the answers, but instead is dedicated to making the best use of those answers or resources regardless of where they are located. I think BitTorrent is a great analogy for the way education should be structured. We each have a small part to contribute.

http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2008/03/in_search_of_the_perfect_bit_torrent_ana.html

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