Jargon: or why a "Dewey interface on the Catalogue" isn't helpful.

The Scene: Park Square Library.
The Characters: Myself and 3rd Year student.

Me: You see the thing about Web 2.0 technology is how much it's opened up the Internet to everyone and now you don't need to have programming skills or knowledge of computer languages and because the start ups are so intuitive you can begin downloading content almost immediately and that's why these new virtual communities for user-generated content are so popular and why they're filling in the need for person to person community interaction.

Student: What's Web 2.0?



Scene ended with me skulking away feeling stupid.

Okay. Let's start again. To anyone I've ever talked jargon at, I apologise. I sometimes make unfair assumptions about what a student may know about an issue, or worse still, I'll use language that is bogged down in geekspeak or technobabble.

So here's the deal: if any of you in my training sessions catch me using jargon put your hand up immediately and let me know in no uncertain terms. It's okay, I can take it.

And for the record - Web 2.0 is any website where visitors can add content themselves. The best current examples are probably Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
And the student who I blinded with jargon?
She was already using all those sites already.