I first discovered the original 23 Things at the beginning of this year when I was the Learning and Technology Intern at National Geographic Libraries and Information Services. My goal as the Learning and Technology Intern was to encourage and educate employees about the various Web 2.0 technologies available through the staff intranet. Web 2.0 can be best explained as a movement of the World Wide Web toward programs and resources that allow for more collaboration, interaction and participation by users. For instance, blogs allow for user comments and ease of publishing. You no longer have to design a website from scratch in order to publish your writing. Now you can just go to a site like Blogger and set up a blog account in minutes.

An important lessoned I learned at National Geographic is that while Web 2.0 applications provide additional avenues of communication, collaboration and disseminating information, they are not all equal in the benefits they offer. And they aren't appropriate for all situations. Oftentimes, Web 2.0 applications are used in combination and this is when they are most effective.