Web 2.0 and Teaching: A BRIEF Intro Remember Web 1.0 when web designers ruled the universe? Well, we’ve moved on...
YOU, as participant in the culture of Web 2.0, were named “Person of
the Year” by Time Magazine in Dec. 2006.
In
Web 2.0 (a.k.a. the social web or the read/write web), we are no
longer simply consumers of content. We are empowered now to be creators of web content. It's easy --- VERY easy.
And,
you
can
use these technologies with your students to create personalized,
interactive learning spaces. A recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 57 percent of teens online have created their own media content. As our culture becomes more participatory, these young people are creating their own blogs and podcasts; they are recording their lives on LiveJournal and developing their own profiles on MySpace; they are producing their own YouTube videos and Flickr photos; they are writing and posting fan fiction or contributing to Wikipedia; they are mashing up music and modding games. Much as engineering students learn by taking apart machines and putting them back together, many of these teens learned how media work by taking their culture apart and remixing it. - Henry Jenkins, From YouTube to YouNiversity Web 2.0 in Action 1. User-Created Content
Let's start with
Google
Docs and Spreadsheets. This very webpage you are viewing now was
created with it. With this free software, you
can create and share Word-type documents and Excel-type
spreadsheets.You can co-edit them with a few
individuals, or publish them for the the world to see. Instantly. Just
like I'm doing here. It's good for collaborative
writing and collaboration in general. Plus, it's so intuitive!
All you need a Google account. And it's
free.
2. Blogs = Instant Publishing. The blogosphere is a massive user-created world of web content. They started as a place for personal reflection, storytelling, etc. but they've turned into powerful content management spaces. You post, visitors comment. Lots of scholarly communication is going on through blogs. It's estimated that there are upwards of 57 million blogs out there. And, the blogosphere is doubling about every 236 days. Student blogs can be great learning tools for them. If they know that others may read what they write, they may think twice about the quality of it. There's also the advantage that others may comment on their writing. Blogs can serve as a defacto home page for you because they interface well with other Web 2.0 technologies. Look at this fine example of Alan Levine's blog which includes blogrolls (other blogs he's reading), a Flickr stream (his images), page links, information pages, links to other projects, and his Del.icio.us bookmark cloud. (More on that in a minute.) YouTube videos as well as presentation tools like Slideshare are easily embedded in his blog. By the way he's using Blogger, which is free and easy. Don't forget to keep up with the TLC Notes blog.
3.
RSS
underlies
it all
That's what enables you to choose what content you want to aggregate from blogs as well as news feeds. New content can be delivered automatically to your email, but there are better ways to track and manage all that information. A free news reader such as Bloglines saves time. After you set up an account, you can quickly add the "bookmarklet" to your browser so that you can just hit the "Sub with Bloglines" button and you're subscribed. Blog readers provide a fast way to scan through a lot of material and read only what's of interest. You can even create your own clip blog. Here's what my blogreader looks like:
You know about Wikipedia.
It's the unprecedented massive
community and
collaboratively
written encyclopedia. For more about it's viability as a
research tool, read my blog posting
Wikipedia:
The Good, the Bad, and the Opportunity.
Wiki software is readily available for free and it provides an easy collaborative content creation with instant browser-based editing and instant publication. It is being used at Otis for several courses and will expand over time as new classes add their own input. Examples. 5. Social Networking
Web 2.0
environments enable social
networking.
Facebook and MySpace have become
familiar words to us lately and are prime examples of social
networking.
LinkedIn is the
new space for adults. You create a profile, network through friends of
your friends, participate in groups, etc.
It is estimated that about 75-85% of all college
students are in FaceBook and that 60% log in
daily!
But social networking is a common feature in most Web 2.0 applications. Bloggers read each others blogs, write comments, and publish blogrolls (links to other blogs). Flickr, YouTube, and Del.icio.us all have powerful networking tools. The culture is participatory and opportunities abound. We are in the process of creating content and we are sharing, sharing, sharing. 5. Social Bookmarking, Tagging, and Folksonomies
It's time to organize the
Web! And people are doing it. Their own way.
Browser bookmarks got completely out of hand for me a while back. So when I when discovered Del.icio.us, I saw the benefit immediately. There are many web-based bookmarking sites, but they have in common certain characteristics. Not only are they accessible anywhere, but you can create your own network, learn from what others have bookmarked, create your own group collaborations, and share resources on topics. Through RSS feeds, you can provide continually updated links on your blog or webpages. Tagging is said to be giving the web a human meaning. Finding information on the Internet used to be only through the complex automated algorithms of search engines. "Tagging has quickly gained popularity because it allows human beings to bring intuitive organization to what otherwise would be largely anonymous entries in an endless sea of data." As you assign your own one word descriptors, you create your own "folksonomy."
I personally love
the "tag cloud" feature, the weighted visual linked lists of your
bookmarks by tag.
See also:
Social Bookmarking: Mark It, Manage It, Share It Social Bookmarking article from Wikipedia
6.
Podcasting and Videoblogs
Several Otis faculty are experimenting with podcasting and creating sophisticated learning objects for their courses. Some are making high-quality videos of demonstrations for students to see again outside of class. These are available through Otis on iTunesU.
Given
the wide availability of small digital voice recorders and new
computers with built in cameras, creating video and audio content is
exploding. In many large universities, lectures and visiting lectures
are routinely recorded and put up for students. Podcasts are now
regularly available from conferences. There are bloggers who
specialize in creating video and audio blogs.
Although not usually educational in nature, YouTube is a potential distribution platform for educational content. Take a look at this video which Alan Levine created for a presentation.
Not
slick, perhaps, but very easy and useful. Judging by the typical
YouTube fare, this method of creating videos is quite common. While
you're there, notice that there are several video responses to his
video also made by simply sitting in from of a computer's built-in
camera. Social networking at work.
Notice also the tagging and the ability to create lists of favorites. Check out my playlist for Web 2.0
There
are many options for uploading video and audio. Check out
Odeo
and
SplashCast.
7.
Image Sharing and
Flickr Flickr is one of many online services that allow uploading, storage, management, sharing and tagging your photos. You can also create presentations, and invite conversations (social networking), create and join interesting groups. For instance, "Tell a Story in 5 Frames." You can also annotate "hot spot" portions of a photo and add additional content to make a learning object. Examples:Jane Goodall's Camp and Alan Levine's What Can We Do With Flickr?
There are also thousands, maybe millions, of photos there that creators are sharing for non-commercial purposes. It is my new favorite place to go for stock photography. Lots of others have used Flickr to create other interesting applications with Flickr photos. Check our my Delicious Flickr tag for some of those. Here's one example:
I've just begun experimenting with Ning and so far it
looks realling interesting. I was able to create a space with blog,
forum, photos, videos, friends, etc. all within an hour. Take a look
at the new
TLC
Social Network.
It works much better with
Explorer than Firefox.
9.
You'll
never learn it all.
There
is more out there than you can imagine.
The main thing to know is that
there are some very exciting opportunities that you can try with your
classes. Experiment. Have fun.
There are scores of new applications becoming available all the time. I'm reporting on them in the TLC Notes blog. If you get inpired and want to read more, look here:
Big
IDEA and
Go2Web20
If you want a full "class," I recommend
23
Things, an online self-paced program about web 2.0 tools and new
technogies, launched August 2006. |
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