Web Tools

WHAT IS WEB 2.0?

Wikipedia refers to Web 2.0 as a “transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of Web sites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications.”¹ Blogs, wikis, podcasts, rss feeds, and social bookmarking are all considered Web 2.0 tools because they allow users to create content and/or collaborate online. Examples of well-known Web 2.0 applications would include Blogger, Wikipedia, Flickr, eBay, Google Maps, Skype, and del.icio.us.

How Can Web 2.0 Tools Help Me?

Web 2.0 tools can enhance your professional and personal life by giving you the ability to:

• Personalize and organize your Internet experience (social bookmarking, tagging, personalized maps)
• Time shift by allowing you to read, listen, or watch content when and where you want (podcasting, blog aggregators, wikis used as meeting spaces)
• Share with others (blog writing, wikis, podcasting, photo/video sharing)
• Connect to others synchronously (in real time as in the case of instant messaging, peer-to-peer telephone networks) or asychronously (forums, blogging, podcasting, wikis)

Uses of these tools in education are also changing the landscape of learning:

• Create group projects, online textbooks and share lesson plans through wikis
• Use podcasts for digital storytelling, student-produced current events programs, teacher-produced test reviews
• Use blogs for student literary discussions and journals

Why Now?

Why all the hype about these tools now?  After all, haven’t we already been using e-mail, newsgroups, and online stores?  What makes these “new” tools different?

The main difference between Web 1.0 applications like e-mail, newsgroups, and online stores, and Web 2.0 applications is the ability of the Web 2.0 user to change the content of the site they visit and/or interact and communicate within the site. The use of these tools has exploded as a result of the availability of low-cost, high-bandwidth connectivity, the increased reliability of computer hardware and software, and the creation and popularity of mobile computing.

What Are Some of These Tools?

For specific information about some of these tools, please click on the links below:

Blogs

 

Podcasts

 

Social Bookmarking

 

Wikis

To learn more about concepts used by these Web 2.0 tools, please click on one of these links:

RSS Feeds

 

Tagging and Folksonomies

Assessment and Safety Issues

So if anybody can put any content they want on the web with ease, how do you know if what you are reading is true?  More importantly, if anybody can put any content they want on the web, is the web a safe place to be?

Responsible computing is a critical consideration for anyone using the web, but especially for educators wanting to use the web with students. One of the most important tasks facing educators is how to prepare students to be safe and successful in both real and virtual worlds that are constantly evolving.  Therefore, teaching students how to assess information for accuracy must be part of any web exercise.  The content of today’s lesson may become obsolete, but the skill of how to evaluate it will stay with the student forever.  Likewise, teaching Internet safety is an important goal for any school district.

Thankfully there are many resources available now addressing both assessment and safety issues.

What Are the Implications of Web 2.0?

Many Web 2.0 tools are referred to as social software because they allow people to meet, connect, and collaborate online.  By combining communication tools and interaction tools into one application, social software allows users to create online communities that facilitate bottom-up communication.  The heart of social software is communities created, defined, and governed by the users themselves.  Membership is voluntary and status in the community is earned by gaining the trust of other members. These communities are able to transcend real world limitations such as geography, background, and financial status.² The power of social software is that it creates environments “that pull useful end results out of human social and/or collaborative behavior.”³

Two examples that will demonstrate the democratic nature and useful end results of Web 2.0 applications would be:

(1)     Digg is a website where all content on it is contributed directly by Digg users.  Anyone can be a Digg user.  The Digg website has topics that currently include Technology, Science, World and Business, Sports, Entertainment, and Gaming.  When someone finds or creates web content about one of those topics that they think other people would like to read, they submit it to Digg and it gets posted on the website.  Once it is on the website other Digg users vote to either “Digg It” or “Bury It.”  Articles are displayed according to popularity, with the most popular ones ending up on the front page.  Therefore, Digg’s content is user driven.  What is amazing is that the Digg community is very good at sorting good content from bad.  As a result Digg is among the top 1000 sites on the web — in any category — according to Amazon's Alexa metrics.

(2)     Invented by an artificial intelligence researcher, Professor Luis van Ahn, at Carnegie Mellon University, the ESP Game is a popular online game that utilizes game players to label images on the web.  Labeling or tagging website content makes it easier for people to find, share, and organize web content.  While it is very helpful for text content, it is crucial for image content because a computer cannot discern that a picture of a dog on the beach is a dog on the beach.  It only sees it as a generic image.  By creating a game that people enjoy playing where the by-product is accurate image tags, Dr. van Ahn has created useful end results from a Web 2.0 application.  Google has put its own version of Dr. van Ahn’s game on its website and called it Image Labeler.

To put into perspective how Web 2.0 could impact business, we want to explain how quickly another emerging technology, the Internet, did just that.  In 2004 Chris Anderson wrote an article in Wired magazine entitled “The Long Tail,” describing a phenomenon created by the Internet that transformed merchandising.⁴ Before the Internet, a store’s inventory was limited by the store’s physical size and location.  Items were stocked based on their popularity and profitability. Consumers often had a difficult time locating low demand merchandise.  With the advent of Internet stores such as Amazon, however, it was possible for one store to maintain huge inventories of both high and low demand items because while the store markets in one location (the Internet), their stock can be spread across the globe.  As a result low demand products can collectively make up a greater market share than high demand products and be profitable.  It is interesting to note that Amazon, which started out as a traditional web 1.0 online store, has now added a wiki feature along with its customer reviews, moving it into the realm of 2.0 applications.

Just as the Internet changed the marketplace by creating new business models such as online auctions and negatively impacting some traditional business models such as brick and mortar travel agencies, Web 2.0 tools are altering certain aspects of business as well. Viral by their very nature, Web 2.0 applications lend themselves perfectly to businesses learning to harness their power for marketing and public relations purposes. There is much experimentation going on in this field. ⁵ Corporate training, personnel recruiting, and corporate communications are all areas of business being changed by social software that include podcasts, wikis, and blogs.  One hallmark that demonstrates the ubiquitousness of these applications is that Content Management Systems such as Microsoft’s Sharepoint Services which are employed by businesses, schools, and government organizations now include the very features made popular by Web 2.0  applications such as chat, forums, blogging, wikis, podcasts, and rss feeds.

Educators are also recognizing the value of using some of these tools in their classrooms with students who are already “plugged-in” and very receptive to digital content provided and shared online.  As a result you can see blogs being used for literary discussions and classroom webpages; wikis being used as online textbooks; and podcasts being used for storytelling and newscasts.

While you may not have been familiar with the business implications of Web 2.0 applications, it is difficult not to be aware their social impact.  MySpace has become a notorious flashpoint for all that is good and bad about social software.  Yet, as of August 2006 there were more than 100 million registered users of MySpace with an average of 230,000 new accounts being created each day.⁶    FaceBook is an online social networking service for college and high school students that allows them to communicate via e-mail, online forums, blogs, and photos.  In fact as reported by Wikipedia, ComScore’s Media Metrix says “it is the number one site for photos, ahead of public sites such as flickr, with 1.5 million photos uploaded daily, and is the seventh most trafficked site in the United States.”⁷ The benefits of being plugged into social networks will soon become apparent as the first wave of the Millennial Generation enters the workforce and their huge social network transforms into a huge professional network. Finally, the social impact of Web 2.0 goes far beyond our discussion here including whole genres of virtual worlds such as Second Life and massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft.

Web 2.0 tools are difficult to explain to those not using them. Trendy and constantly evolving, these tools are sometimes difficult to classify as well.  With each newly released application you can see a convergence of functions.  For example, newly designed wikis may includes blog-like characteristics.  Applications gain and lose popularity based on competition from newly created applications with more or easier-to-use features.  However, while the names and classifications may disappear, the functions they serve will not.  People will continue to meet, connect, and collaborate online.

_________________

¹  “Web 2.0,” Wikipedia

²  “Social Software,”  Wikipedia  

³  “My Working definition of social software. . .” by Tom Coates, PlasticBlog.org,

May 8, 2003.

⁴  “The Long Tail,” by Chris Anderson, Wired magazine, October 2004.

^{5  “}Web 2.0 Has Corporate America Spinning,” Business Week, June 5, 2006.

⁶  “Whose Space Is It” U.S. News and World Report, Sepember 18, 2006, p. 46.

⁷  "FaceBook," Wikipedia