UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DEL ESTADO DE MÉXICO
FACULTAD DE LENGUAS
B.A. in language, major
in English teaching.
Activity 1: Essay about
web 2.0
by Lizeth Gama Villegas
25th June, 2015
Web 2.0 Takes On
Colleges and Universities
Clearly, as we have been studying ICT
and CALL are tools that teachers and students use to improve part of the
teaching and learning process in many subject areas. Businesses have already
seized opportunities to leverage this powerful transformation in innovative
ways, and their expectations of students’ abilities to perform in
technology-based environments are increasing.
This puts enormous pressure on
colleges and universities to integrate new and evolving technologies into their
academic programs that will improve student learning and prepare them for a
dynamic, collaborative, and digitally-mediated world. With the tools and
insights presented in this white paper, colleges and universities will be able
to tap into Web 2.0 and evolving widgets in revolutionary ways.
This essay has the purpose to understand
the fundamentals of Web 2.0, explore ways to implement Web 2.0 technologies
into current academic applications and leverage Web 2.0 and rich media tools to
attract, retain and prepare students for employment.
Certainty, information sharing and collaboration
via rich media is reshaping the lives and behaviors of millions of people—and
in no demographic is this more evident than today’s youth. The Internet's first
mass market stage of development saw users going to the Internet to find
information. It was pretty much a one-way experience, similar to going to the
library to find a book. In contrast, Web 2.0 relies on user participation.
Web 2.0 is the current state of online
technology as it compares to the early days of the Web, characterized by
greater user interactivity and collaboration, more pervasive network
connectivity and enhanced communication channels.
One of the most significant differences between
Web 2.0 and the traditional World Wide Web (WWW, retroactively referred to as
Web 1.0) is greater collaboration among Internet users, content providers and
enterprises. The social nature of Web 2.0 is another major difference between
it and the original, static Web. Increasingly, websites enable community-based
input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Types of social media
sites and applications include forums, microblogging, social networking, social
bookmarking, social curation, and wikis.
By integrating Web 2.0 applications into
standard curricula, colleges and universities can harness and capitalize off
the power of today’s technologies. Several have already tapped into the early
incarnation of these trends, including distance-based learning and Web-based
classroom instruction, and still others are implementing social networking,
wikis, and blogs into a variety of learning experiences—with advantageous
results.
This whitepaper demonstrates the enormous value
of applying Web 2.0-based technologies and emerging widgets to academic program
development. Colleges and universities that integrate these tools into course content
will flourish in today’s knowledge-based economy by attracting and retaining
more students, engaging with them in revolutionary new ways, and preparing them
for success in an increasingly digitized workplace.
Marc Prensky describes today's students as
digital natives who have functioned in a digital environment for most of their
lives; as a result, technologies that faculty and staff typically see as
revolutionary are routine for today's entering college students.
Net Generation students arrive at their
universities as experienced multitaskers, accustomed to using text messaging,
telephones, and e-mail while searching the Internet and watching television.
They are ready for multimedia learning to be delivered on a flexible learning
schedule, one that is not tied to a set time and place.
Over the last decade, the learning paradigm has
seen a shift from the behaviorist approach to constructivism, discovery and
collaborative learning. Web 2.0 features provide the technological basis to
implement these approaches. While it’s clear that colleges and universities
must tap into these new and emerging technologies, it’s important that they
maintain a balance between freedom and control. The trick is in finding the
right combination of Web 2.0 tools that underscore the educational initiatives
of each college or university. To accomplish this, institutions will need to
consider all of these solutions:
1. Blogs
2. Podcasts
3. RSS
4. Widgets
5. Wikis
6. Video Sharing
7. Mashups
Educators now need to be aware of social
networking sites since so many college students have embraced their capabilities.
Some faculty members do incorporate Facebook in tentative yet innovative ways.
For example, one instructor uses Facebook as a publicity vehicle for his
study-abroad trips (Lemuel 2006). Another uses it as a venue for advertising
events and then gives students an assignment asking them to analyze the site.
College instructors are also using other Web
2.0 applications in innovative ways. As noted by Bryan Alexander, social
bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us facilitate a new kind of collaborative
research since "finding people with related interests can magnify one's
work by learning from others or by leading to new collaborations";
moreover, the user-based tagging afforded by such sites "can offer new
perspectives on one's research, as clusters of tags reveal patterns (or absences)
not immediately visible". In turn, social writing platforms such as wikis
and Google Docs, which allow two or more people to edit a document in real time
on the Internet, can be integrated into coursework. Blogs can be used to expand
course activities beyond the four walls of the classroom, so students are
writing for a worldwide audience instead of only for classmates and the
instructor.
Colleges are also using Web 2.0 outside of the
instructional context. Campus administrators and police harvest information
from online discussions and postings to monitor possible illegal activities and
to keep a finger on the pulse of the campus.
In turn, an initiative at Duke University may
serve as a particularly notable example of Web 2.0 innovation. Duke made
headlines in 2004 when it gave iPods to incoming freshmen as part of its
multiyear Duke Digital Initiative to "stimulate creative uses of digital
technology in academic and campus life".
Tufts University combined Google's mapping
technology with institution of higher education (IHE) information to create a
mashup complete with "satellite images, informative links, [and] category
searches" in order to provide "a resource that enables prospective
and current students, staff, faculty, campus visitors, community members, and
others to explore the campus online and locate buildings and services".
Duke has developed a number of supported
educational uses for iPods, many of which include interactive elements typical
of Web 2.0. Students create or record lectures, discussions, interviews, and
presentations and then upload audio or image files to shared course space.
Instructors record everything from interviews and oral exams to classroom
lectures and download student contributions from the course space to their own
iPods.
In conclusion, to move our educational
practices forward, we will need an understanding of our users and their
changing behavior, a willingness to experiment with new business models, and an
appreciation of hybrid organizations that take advantage of skills contributed
by various players with diverse backgrounds.
The future is teeming with opportunities to
capture Web 2.0 tools that can dramatically refine, reshape, and revolutionize
student learning. When integrated into standard curricula and academic
programs, colleges and universities will realize enormous benefits, such as
increased collaboration between and among students and faculty, inexpensive
ways of employing experiential and hands-based learning that boost knowledge
retention and prepare students for collaborative working environments, and
position institutions of higher learning as leaders in innovation.
Colleges and universities will have to take a
good, hard look at current organizational structures and determine how
hierarchical chains can be broken with carefully selected Web 2.0 tools that
facilitate open, integrated channels of communication and learning. It’s not
the technology, the tools, or even the content that defines what students will
walk away with upon graduation. Ultimately, it is the way that they learn and
how they are able to apply that knowledge that will redefine knowledge-based
organizations, businesses, and the world in which we live. Web 2.0 is no longer
a wave of the future; it is the regeneration of teaching and learning that’s
central to our lives today—and it’s up to colleges and universities to seize
its potential.
REFERENCES
Y
Combinated (2005) Web 2.0 Retrieved June 25, 2015, from
http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html#f1n
Srinivasan
Venkat (n.d) WEB 2.0/3.0: Emerging Widgets and the Next Generation of Higher
Education Applications Retrieved June 25, 2015, from https://cdns3.trainingindustry.com/media/3114049/niit_wp_web2.pdf
Thomson
John (2015) Web 2.0 Takes On Colleges And Universities: The Dawn Of Education
2.0. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/04/20/web_20_takes_on_colleges.htm
Rouse
Margaret (2015) - What is Web 2.0 ? Definition from WhatIs.com. (n.d.).
Retrieved June 25, 2015, from
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Web-20-or-Web-2
