Web 2.0 Links

HeyJude

When studying Web 2.0, there is so much information on the internet available. One very good website on this topic is HeyJude. Judy O'Connell is a teacher librarian in the Parramatta diocese who created her blog with the intention of sharing the knowledge of Web 2.0 she has gained with others. With links to Judy's Del.icio.us bookmarks , other educational blogs and sites/programs she has recently found, it is an incredible source of information for anyone interested in the evolving nature of the internet and its uses in the classroom.

Del.icio.us links

Blogs in the Classroom

Blogs can be an incredible tool in the classroom. A teacher can set up a blog and then students link to it. This allows them to post anything they want the students to know online for all to see. This includes links, videos and pictures they want the students to see. Students can then post comments to the teacher as well as asking questions. It can create incredible class discussions and often the students dont even realise they are learning as they enjoy using these sites so much. A possible assingment can be for students to create blogs on certain topics and then post all the information they find on their and submit the assignment by handing the teacher the URL. These are only a limited number of uses for blogs in the classroom.

Web 2.0 - a window into the mind

I found an article on Scobleizer's Weblog. It was his thoughts on the idea of Facebook opening a hotel.

Think about how a business would change if it knew every one of its customers had a Facebook account.
I was thinking of a hotel/casino where when I walked in the iPod in the room was playing the music that I had set as my favorite on my Facebook profile. The digital screens in my room had all my photos and some random photos from my friends. My favorite movies and TV shows were on the video device. The bar knew my favorite drink and how I liked it made.
That got me thinking about how I’d change my business after I knew everything about my customers.

This thought really hit me about web 2.0. What kind of revolution could this create in business and education? Imagine if you could know everything about your customers or your students. What kind of service could you create. We are always told to interact with students on a personal level (E.g. find out interests and use them to build relationships) and now we have a way of doing this. If you have a tudents permission to access their site, you can see what music/tv/sport/movies etc they like. You can see if theyare mainly visual or prefer written. It can be like a window into their mind.

Blogs

One of the most widely used features on web 2.0 is that of blogging. Blogging is a term that describes a site where someone can develop thoughts on posts that are arranged in chronological order. Blogs are often used to comment on food, sport, literature, politics, personal or business views. Some even act as a form of virtual diary. The use of Blogs is incredibly varied.

The benifits of a blog is that you can post information on the net, edit it at any time and other people can see your thoughts and share their own on your site.

One problem can be that of privacy. Anyone can see your thoughts if you dont make it a private account. Also, it is always in chronological order and so you can never change the order of the posts, which can be frustrating as it means you cant put it into a more logical order (such as grouping certain thoughts together).

Wikipedia article on Web 2.0

This picture below hight lights the main points of the wikipedia article below it.




Characteristics of "Web 2.0"

While interested parties continue to debate the definition of a Web 2.0 application, a Web 2.0 website may exhibit some basic common characteristics. These might include:

• "Network as platform" — delivering (and allowing users to use) applications entirely through a browser. See also Web operating system.
• Users owning the data on a site and exercising control over that data.
• An architecture of participation that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. This stands in sharp contrast to hierarchical access-control in applications, in which systems categorize users into roles with varying degrees of functionality.
• A rich, interactive, user-friendly interface based on Ajax or similar frameworks.
• Some social-networking aspects.

The impossibility of excluding group-members who don’t contribute to the provision of goods from sharing profits gives rise to the possibility that rational members will prefer to withhold their contribution of effort and free-ride on the contribution of others.
The concept of Web-as-participation-platform captures many of these characteristics. Bart Decrem, a founder and former CEO of Flock, calls Web 2.0 the "participatory Web" and regards the Web-as-information-source as Web 1.0.

Del.icio.us in the classroom

Del.icio.us would be a very interesting programme that can be used in all classrooms. Teachers can create an account and then all the students can connect so that the class shares a network. This can then be used to share links and websites with each other for collaborative learning. For instance, students can post an interesting website they found on a particular topic to the site, and then all the other students have access to it. This means that the students are learning from each other and working collaboratively to create a database of useful information. Also, a teacher can post links to the site for the students to research for homework or assignments, rather than handing out a sheet of paper with the links written on it. This means the students have access every time they log onto the internet.