Last month CCCOnline surveyed our faculty on their training and professional development needs. Like most surveyors we included a comment section. One frequent response from faculty in that section was the question “Are we expected to use all of these new technologies in our classes?” If we answered “Yes!” to that question the follow-up would almost certainly be “Why?” Web 2.0 has brought with it a myriad of tools for adding content, editing content, and shaping what students see and do on the web. A critical question to ask though is “Why?” Why would we choose to use one of the new tools rather than those that are already built in to the learning management systems we are already using. What do these tools add the the learner experience?
What is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 has been called the teaching and learning web (Rob Stephenson, NROC presentation spring 2006). The web is transitioning from its original incarnation as a set of websites developed by a group of people and looked at by the rest of us. Web 1.0 was all about providing information more or less instantaneously. Web 2.0 expands the original group of web developers to include the rest of us. Now anyone with a computer and an internet connection can not only surf the web looking for information they can provide information through use of a free blog, a picture or video sharing site, or a more complex website such as a wiki.
In Web 2.0 users control the information flow through the use of personalized home pages (google, or netvibes perhaps) with RSS feeds from their favorite blog or news sites. Users create social networks through communities such as MySpace and FaceBook. In all of these spaces users decide what information goes up and how it is formatted. Web 2.0 is all about user control.
Web 2.0 Tool Examples:
- Customized Homepage - Netvibes, Google
- Tagging - Del.icio.us
- Pictures - Flickr, Picassa, Buzznet, Deviantart, Photobucket
- Video - YouTube
- Blogging - Blogger, WordPress
- Podcasts - podcast.net, podcastpickle.com
- Sharing - MySpace, Eduspaces, Facebook
- Virtual Worlds - Second Life, Croquet
- Wikis - Wikipedia
- Slideshows – Slideshare
Over the next couple of months I am planning a series of posts that will try to answer the “Why?” question for several popular Web 2.0 applications in the context of thier use in either an online or hybrid (partially online) course. First up -- podcasts, followed by blogs and wikis.
Lisa Cheney-Steen
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