Web 2.0 in Education
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There is so much controversy over the term Web 2.0. Some people state that the digits “2.0” determine a version, and that the Web is continuously evolving without need for a “label”. They claim that the assertion that Web 2.0 is more user-centered and interactive than Web 1.0 is not true. While new technologies (e.g. AJAX, a group of technologies that make possible for so-called Web 2.0 tools to be created) do mke teh Web more interactive, this interction and user-centered content generation was envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee since the beginning of the Wolrd Wide Web, not being a standard for this phaseof the Web only. https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2006-May/000399.html
I do believe that the interaction made easy, the collaborative tools and the (normally) cleaner user interface of tools (visual literacy) make it possible for a more learner-centered learning approach mediate by these new tools.
Vygotsky’s, Piage’s and other contructivist learning frameworks can be easily implemented online by means of the Read/Write Web.
Resources such as “social bookmarking”, “social networks”, “group blogging”, “video/image/audio sharing”, wikis, tagging, and many other emerging tools enhance interaction on the Web.
This interaction can bring more meaningful learning into place, learning that happens through social interaction, sharing of knowledge, etc.
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Web 2.0 tools you can try right now:
create a social network on www.ning.com
create a blog on www.wordpress.com
create and share slideshows on www.slideshare.net
create and share videos on www.youtube.com
create and share a wiki on www.wetpaint.com
create a microblog on www.twitter.com
create microblogs for your classes on www.edmodo.com
join Second Life on www.secondlife.com
my blog on http://tweaklearning.wordpress.com
If you don’t want to join anythign right now, just visit websites like these and you will see how much fun and interactive they can be…
Educators should care about everything that helps their learners learn in meaningful ways… most teachers agree (or am I wrong) that learnign can be improved with social interaction (or am I wrong?). Research talks about informal learning being the means for most of our learning. Why not give it a try? These new Web tools matter to us because they matter to the learners.
We must engage our digital learners and create real world scenarios and handson learning for them. In the 21st Century it is important for us to utilize these tools effectively in classrooms to capture our diversified learners in fun and engaging ways.
Thanks for agreeing!
Whatever we call it – Web 2.0, social Web, or now Web 3.0, the semantic Web – they matter because they matter to learners. And more so, they matter because they’re part of the tool set that allows lifelong learning.
I’m often asked the question – with a universe of information, with Google at your fingertips, and with the semantic Web arriving and allowing deeper connections across knowledge domains, then what happens to traditional roles – marketer, educator, corporation, parent? And it strikes me that these roles will evolve towards context, and towards providing insight – a Sherpa, if you will, not on content but rather on the pathway from information through application and finally towards wisdom.
Today’s didactic professor (and sure, there are fewer and fewer of them) becomes tomorrow’s facilitator, storyteller, and sage. But as these things, they need to find tools for engagement.
We’re becoming prosumers and prolearners. Our education doesn’t end when we leave the classroom, and increasingly computers will do a lot of the heavy lifting and bring content to us in webs of information, regardless what version we call those webs.
In our search for meaning, we’ll turn to others, to our communities – whether a Ning or a bunch of people we grab coffee with on the weekend, and to our sages. An educator who simply publishes and speaks won’t carry the currency of tomorrow – reputation, built on being a participant in technology and someone with the vision to frame its context and to allow us to see that our pathway through it is a self-enabled journey that allows for our exploration of the potential of being human.
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