March 2008 — News
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A Taste of Web 2.0
In the initial launch of Collaboration 2.0, Dave Nagel (2008) reported that during 2008 educators can look for "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" (p. 2). Everything on the Web sounds good.
However, setting aside security issues associated with using Web 2.0 applications, educators have concerns about risks for K-12 students and wasting time. Many are banning school use of the very applications (e.g., social networking, blogs, wikis, chat) integral to online learning systems (Nagel, 2008). Even without a ban, another contributing factor for avoiding Web 2.0 might be educator fears about changing their teaching methods to better engage learners. The International Society for Technology in Education's (2007) release of National Educational Technology Standards for Students: The Next Generation indicates that to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world, students should know and be able to use technology for creativity and innovation; communication and collaboration; research and information fluency; critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making; digital citizenship; and technology operations and concepts. Thus one might say such banning limits development of skills valued for the 21st century.
Maybe the concerns for Web 2.0 are presumptuous, as there are safe sites that educators can use. It takes time to explore for what's available, time to experiment with tools of interest, and extra time is something that most educators don't have. But, if you can convince yourself of the potential of Web 2.0, you might be able to convince others. Here's a primer for the unknowing and those who want to take their technology use to the next level.
What's Web 2.0?
Terms like Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 suggest the latter is a software upgrade, but the upgrade is really in terms of what users now can do on the Internet. Initially the Internet was a place to go to find information within static Web pages, those now linked with the term "Web 1.0," a read-only, one-way medium. Web 2.0 is an evolution to a two-way read/write medium, with Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 coexisting on the Internet. Jeff Utecht's Web 2.0 video on YouTube will help you learn more about those differences.
There appears to be no unique definition of Web 2.0. At Wikipedia, one finds that "Web 2.0 can refer to a trend in Web design and development, a perceived second generation of Web-based communities and hosted services ... which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users." It's been defined by an IBM social-networking analyst as "a knowledge-oriented environment where human interactions generate content that is published, managed and used through network applications in a service-oriented architecture" (
