Web 2.0
Web 2.0 applications are the cause of considerable energy. Many useful new free web applications are emerging that represent qualitatively different benefits for research, teaching and learning. These second generation Web technologies allow people to create, publish, exchange, share, and cooperate in building information (knowledge). However, educators and support personnel alike have been overwhelmed by the number of new tools, unable to keep up with the proliferation of capabilities. Many of these tools are designed for integration within blogs or other social networking applications, but they can also be integrated into Blackboard to expand existing capabilities.
The term Web 2.0 is sometimes used to refer to the broad rennaissance taking place today in Web applications. This web page will explore several types of free tools with potential benefits for educators, many of which can be used to extend the power of Blackboard.
- Web 2.0 applications realize the "read and write vision" for the web present in Tim Berners Lee's original vision of the world wide web.
- Web 2.0 applications are creating a semantic web in which we create structures defined by our interests… using our taxonomies (folksonomies created using our tags) …making it easier to share resources, and benefit from the social potential of the world wide web.
---------------- interesting videos on Web 2.0 -----------------------------
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Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, Delicious, and Flickr are examples of Web 2.0 applications. Using web-based tools students can now collaboratively construct knowledge, edit it, discuss it, and publish a document that reflects their knowledge as their understanding of a concept grows.
Warning!
Users of many of these web 2.0 sites will have to accept larger security risks but these risks are generally manageable, and tolerable for non-mission-critical applications. Suggestions for limiting privacy and security concerns:
- make use of several free email services: Gmail (good), Yahoo, Hotmail, and avoid use of your personal college email on these sites.
- Pay attention to the privacy section and "terms of use" policy on web 2.0 sites before adopting for classroom use.
- Check out the Creative Commons – Dummies Guide for Information You Publish:
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/12/dummies-guide-to-choosing-creative.html
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Web 2.0 Literacy
A teenager in the U.S. spends between 8 and 10 hours per day engaged with media, more than twice the time he spends on a yearly basis at school, so the first question is, ‘Who is educating, who is informing the teenager — the school or the media?’ The division between the reality of the student’s life and school is becoming wider and wider, because school is this isolated place with little access to the student's outside interests. We need to bring these issues into the educational system so that we radically change the way we think, or we will fail to provide truly meaningful tools for critical thinking. [ pbs.org]
The new paradigm emphasizes interactivity, user-created content, file sharing, and user-customization. The table below (Malcolm Brown, Educause Review, March/April 2007) highlights some of the distinctions between the original Web 1.0 that emerged in 1995 and the new Web 2.0 world that has exploded over the past five years.
| Characteristics of Web 1.0 |
Characteristics of Web 2.0 |
| Publishing |
Participation |
| Individual |
large-scale Web sites Blogs, wikis |
| Directories |
Tagging |
| Users observe, “listen to” Web sites |
Users add value, co-create |
| Subscription services |
Low-cost or free services |
| They, the media (control held by a few) |
We, the media (we create the media) |
| Authority is key |
Collective decision-making |
| Versions and major releases |
Continuous micro-enhancement |
| Creator defines content, design |
User defines content, design |
| Value indifferent to amount of usage |
Value increases the more it is used |
| In author we trust |
In users we trust |
| Harnessing of authority’s intelligence |
Harnessing of collective intelligence |
| Control |
Cooperation |
| Example: Encyclopedia Britannica |
Example: Wikipedia |
Cf. Gary Friesen's Schema
Web 2.0 has become a major technology that supports multimedia content publishing and sharing over the Internet. The term "Web 2.0" refers to an second generation of Web technology that allows people to create, publish, exchange, share, and cooperate on information (knowledge) in a new way of communication and collaboration. The Web 2.0 technology allows room for creating and sharing. The success of Web 2.0 heavily relies on multimedia-enabled communication and collaboration among participants over the Internet -- where are the participants; what participants possess; whether participants are willing to communicate; how a group of participants can be formed as communities of practice; and how participants can work together trough new generation of multimedia-enabled social software such as Wikis, Blogs, RSS feeds, video podcast, tagging, Ajax-based browsers, peer-to-peer, instant messenger, and other social networking software. Some successful examples of Web 2.0 applications are Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, and Flickr. The Web 2.0 is shifting economical value of the Web to new business models for the next generation of Web technologies and applications.
According to IEEE's International Workshop on Web 2.0 and Multimedia-enabled Education, Web 2.0 topics include:
- Blogs, Wikis
- Collaborative learning
- Communities of practice, learning communities
- Content management, content adaptation
- Folksonomy, taxonomy, tagging, annotation
- Internet telephony, instant messenger, P2P
- Knowledge management, semantic Web
- Learning styles, pedagogical models
- Mashup languages (Ajax)
- Mobile and ubiquitous learning
- Situated learning, context-aware learning
- Social networks, FOAF, XFN, RDF
- Syndication (RSS, Atom), podcast
Having moved away from a read-only medium, the Internet is now a place where any and all users can contribute, and transform information. There is growing interest in using this recent technological transformation to affect the practices of institutions of higher education (IHEs). In his article, Thompson offers an exploration of the meaning and application of Web 2.0; evaluates how Net Generation students, who will enter the classroom with Web 2.0 expectations and experiences, will reshape IHEs and their practices; and examines what some IHEs are specifically doing to meet the needs of the next generation of students. Thompson suggests that in order to move our educational practices forward, it is incumbent upon us to recognize and react to our changing student population. (Cf.
Is Education 1.0 Ready for Web 2.0 Students? by John Thompson)
Teaching and Learning with the Net Generation, by Kassandra Barnes, Raymond C. Marateo, and S. Pixy Ferris. In this article we define the characteristics of Net Geners' learning styles and discuss how educators can make the most of these particular traits.
- Net Geners, on the whole, want to do well in college.
- Having been raised in an age of media saturation and convenient access to digital technologies, Net Geners have distinctive ways of thinking, communicating, and learning
- Net Geners tend toward independence and autonomy in their learning styles
- a greater desire for active, engaged learning experiences among Net Gen students...
- Net Geners want more hands-on, inquiry-based approaches to learning and are less willing simply to absorb what is put before them
- this more independent learning style has grown out of the ingrained habits of seeking and retrieving information from the Internet.
Blogs:
Blogs are a personal journal-type web site that can be maintained by someone with limited computer skills. They create a communication space that teachers can use whenever there is a need for students to write, share ideas and reflect on work being undertaken.
Examples of Blogging Resources:
Video Blogs add excitement and creativity to lessons and give students a creative outlet for demonstrating their knowledge.
Educational Blogs (the list is endless…)
Social Bookmarking Tools
Social Bookmarking tools are very different from Social Networking sites. The current social bookmarking era started with del.icio.us. The simple concept of a tag has turned our interactions with the web upside down. It has led to the idea of being able to store personal bookmarks online, tagging them to note why you regarded each bookmark as significant, share them with everyone and see what others have bookmarked. The use of simple "tags", has made possible today's rich social web ecosystem. Use of social bookmarking teaches students new ways to organize information and become a part of a community of users that is constantly changing connections between topics.
Scholar.com ( Blackboard's Social Bookmarking service) Scholar is
- educational network of students and faculty from around the world
- a tool for conveniently and easily adding to and managing your web resources
- a lifelong repository that can easily be shared with students and peers
Anyone can explore Scholar's website without an account, but to get the full functionality of Scholar and to save your own bookmarks you will need an account on Scholar. To get your account and start using Scholar, access Scholar from the tab to Scholar on the campus Blackboard system; you will be presented with a Scholar Account Creation form. A Scholar account is useful for the following reasons:
- to be able to use Scholar conveniently from Blackboard (Read on to see the advantages of this!)
- to allow individuals to access their Scholar account from any computer
- to allow individuals to associate their Scholar accounts with other institutions they may work at in the future.
The Scholar Account Creation form will ask the individual to select a Desired Scholar Login name and a Desired Scholar Password. Scholar Login names are for life, so they should be selected carefully. The user can not change their Scholar Login name after creation. Individuals can retrieve their Scholar Passwords providing they enter a valid email address and provide a Password Hint. Passwords and Password Hints can be changed by the user after creation. After account creation, everytime an individual clicks on a link or tab to Scholar, inside the learning management system, they will be seamlessly authenticated through to Scholar.
When an individual moves to another institution which also has Scholar installed, the user simply clicks on the Already a Scholar Member link and enters their Scholar Login and Scholar Password. This will associate a Scholar account with the new institution's Blackboard learning management system and allow seamless access from this new institution's learning management system.
INSTRUCTORS:
There are two ways Blackboard instructors can integrate Scholar resources directly into the course environment:
Scholar Course Tool - Instructors can display their customized Scholar resource collections as a new course tool. You can allow students to contribute to a course collection of web resources, or set up custom streams to pull anything tagged with search parameters of your choice. (e.g. the most recent bookmarks tagged with DNA and discipline tagged with "Nursing" saved by instructors). Students in the course can access the Scholar Course Welcome Page by clicking the Scholar course tool and begin using the resources in their studies right away.
Course Documents Type - You can embed one of your Scholar Bookmarks or Saved Searches directly in the course as a new type of Course Documents.
STUDENTS:
Once the instructor has registered the course with Scholar, students can access Scholar resources that your instructor has chosen directly within your course. And now students can contribute to course collections as well! When you find appropriate resources, you can tag them for the course and dynamically add them to the course collection!
Google Apps:
Flickr:
Mashups
Mashup Note: Wikipedia offers some great articles that explain mashups. Basically they are hybrid web applications that take features from one application (like Flickr) and mash it up with another (like a map). In this example, you get Mappr (http://mappr.com).
RSS Feeds and Education:
RSS Aggregator (also known as a “feed reader”):
- This software subscribes to content that is automatically brought to the user’s desktop whenever the content (such as news headlines, blog or podcast) is updated. RSS is the technology that creates the automatic feed
- Where To Get A News Aggregator (or RSS Reader)
News aggregators are available in several varieties. They can be Web-based services, standalone client software, or plug-ins for existing Web browsers or email packages. Here's a short list of RSS readers you might like to try:
Wikis:
Wikis are increasingly being used for sharing information among a small group of users or a world wide audience. Wikis give students ownership over constructing their own knowledge and presenting it in a new way.
Resources
http://westwood.wikispaces.com/
http://www.wikimatrix.org/wizard.php
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Web_Page
Wikis Used in Education
Podcasting
“Subscribe-able” audio or video file that can be down- loaded from a web site and played on one’s computer or portable iPod or MP3 player. iTunes is the most popular site for podcasts.
Virtual Reality Site
Web sites that enables a user to create an avatar that interacts inside a computer-generated 3D virtual world
- Second Life – launched in 2003 it now has 7.5 million users. More than $1 million is spent in Second Life every day using “Linden dollars” (current exchange rate is US$ 1 = L$ 270
Media Sharing Sites
Social Networking Sites:
Web sites that enables users to connect with each other and share personal information, pictures and videos.
- MySpace – founded in late 2003 it now has 185 million users from ages 14 and up.
- Facebook – founded in early 2004 it now has 25 million users. Originally just for college students it is now
open to anyone with an email address. Wiki – a “free-for-all” web site to which anyone can contribute or
edit what is already there. FaceBook - From OEDb (Online Education Database): Top Ten Facebook Apps for Librarians
http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/top-ten-facebook-apps-for-librarians-part-one/
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