January 2008 — News

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Web 2.0 in Education: Trends for 2008

by Dave Nagel

That this will ever be taken to the extreme--to the point where computers exist truly as mere thin clients--is doubtful. But there is no doubt that there's a continued trend toward more and more hosted, mashed-up, collaborative tools in education, from assessment platforms to collaborative learning tools (such as blogs and wikis) to online delivery of audio and video to full-blown productivity tools, such as Google Apps for Education and others.

Of course, Apple did take a step in that direction this week with the launch of the MacBook Air, a notebook for the wireless generation that doesn't even bother to incorporate any removable media devices whatsoever (and yet still manages to be considerably more expensive than standard MacBook notebooks). The implication is that whatever a user needs, he or she can get it off the Web--whether it's digital media or productivity tools. We have yet to see whether people will shell out $1,800 on that premise, since the MacBook Air doesn't ship for another two weeks, but the results will be telling at Apple's next quarterly conference call. The company is usually a pioneer in the adoption of new removable media technologies and the rejection of the old, so success with this sort of approach could portend similar moves by PC manufacturers.

Security Issues Loom Large
Be that as it may, Web 2.0 faces considerable challenges in the coming year, not the least of which is in the very un-Web 2.0 sphere of "cyber security." The very technologies that make Web 2.0 a reality, especially AJAX, seem to be considerably vulnerable to security breaches that can lead to data loss and theft and other malicious activities.

In fact, Georgia Tech's Information Security Center released a report entitled "GTISC Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2008," in which Web 2.0 was cited first as one of the threats to watch in 2008, topping botnets, directed messaging attacks, and RFID attacks. (It also, coincidentally, cited mobile convergence threats in its top 5.)

Commenting on the report, GTISC Director Mustaque Ahamad said, "As newer and more powerful applications enabled by technologies like Web 2.0 continue to grow, and converged communications applications increasingly rely on IP-based platforms, new challenges will arise in safeguarding these applications and the services they rely on. The GTISC Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2008 highlights those areas of greatest risk and concern, particularly as continued convergence of enterprise and consumer technologies is expected over the coming year."

Web 2.0 was cited for potential client-side attacks on social networking technologies, aimed at "stealing private data, hijacking Web transactions, executing phishing scams, and perpetrating corporate espionage." Mobile convergence threats included "vishing," "smishing," and voice spam, plus denial of service attacks targeting voice infrastructure, according to the report.