Web 2.0 – What is it?

“Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means” (Laningham, 2006 as cited in Anderson, 2007, p5)

Despite the above statement from Sir Tim Burners-Lee, the person credited with creating the world wide web (Anderson, 2007), many individuals have attempted to define Web 2.0, most of these centre around the introduction of interactive websites where users can contribute from their computers around the world (Higginbotham, 2010). Examples of web 2.0 includes, blogs, wikis, facebook, youtube etc.

These websites are referred to as web 2.0 for a number of reasons. These include:

· Interactive elements available to users

· Design of websites is centred on user.

· Promotes two way communication and collaboration

· Easy and quick access from all over the globe (Higginbotham, 2010)

Web 2.0 has had a profound influence on society as a whole, with the introduction of websites such as facebook, where users create their own profiles and connect with their friends wherever they may be, youtube, where users can upload their videos of anything and share them with the world, and blogs, where users can write about their day to day lives or any topic of their choosing for others to read, their impact is being felt in a number of areas. According to Marketwire.com, 4 in 10 workers in the United Kingdom regularly access social networking sites at work, while 26% of workers admitted to spending more than an hour of their work days on these sites (One News Page, 2010).

My next post will provide you with some examples of web 2.0 sites

Thanks for your readership

Russell

Web 2.0 – Examples and Advantages and Disadvantages (YouTwitFace)

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world with over 500 million users spending over 700 billion minutes on facebook every month. Founded by Harvard University students David Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin in February 2004, it took less than a year to reach one million users and has since spawned facebook for mobile phones and even a feature length film (Facebook.com, 2010).

Facebook is designed to enable users to share thoughts, messages, photos, interests and details about their lives to their chosen friends. Users create a profile of themselves and share status updates with their friends.

Advantages:
• Users can easily communicate with friends and family all over the world
• Users can share important moments in their lives with friends who cannot be in attendance with photos and videos such as weddings, birthdays and holidays
• Users can reconnect with friends or family who have been lost over the years
• “Teachers can publish their slides for lessons and lots more multi-media contents” (TeachXav, 2009).
• Teachers also have the ability to create applications to allow students to contact them directly, especially useful for distance education (TeachXav, 2009).
Disadvantages:
• Facebook can reduce the amount of face to face communication in a users life
• Facebook can also impact on non related activities such as job applications, as bosses become more internet savvy and look up applicants profiles.
• There are also many security and privacy concerns with facebook, where users share personal information on their profile without realising who can access this information.

My next post in the series will look at YouTube

Thanks for you readership,
Russell

Web 2.0 – Examples and Advantages and Disadvantages (YouTwitFace)

YouTube

“Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the world's most popular online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small” (Youtube.com, 2010)

After just one year online, over 100 million videos were being watched daily and over 65,000 videos were being uploaded daily (Rueters, 2006). In October 2006 Youtube was purchased by Google Inc for 1.65 billion US dollars and by May 2010, over 2 billion videos were being watched daily (Chapman, 2010)

Advantages:
• Users are able to upload their own videos to share with the world
• “Video sharing with classmates on the social front is easy, fun, and rising in participation” (Karimi, 2006).
• Class presentations and projects can be improved and enhanced.
• Teachers can provide live feedback on uploaded videos.
• Teachers could upload homework tasks to maintain student motivation (Karimi, 2006)
• Many television and film companies are placing their products on youtube for viewers to watch.

Disadvantages:
• There are many inappropriate videos on youtube that can be mistakenly accessed by unsuspecting users. According to Karimi (2006) “the rise in porn sites and the dangers of cyberspace cannot be overlooked” (p2) by teachers.
• Many workplaces have had to ban the use of youtube by their employees due to the time wasted on the website as well as the strain on the company’s internet usage. This is also true of students, as they can become distracted with other videos available to them.

My next post in the series will look at Twitter

Thanks for you readership,
Russell

Web 2.0 – Examples and Advantages and Disadvantages (YouTwitFace)

Twitter

“Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now” (Twitter, 2010).

Twitter allows users to post ‘tweets’ or micro posts of less than 140 characters to share with their followers. These tweets can be related to a certain topic, through the use of a #tag. Many TV shows and movies have designed their campaigns to reach the number one tweeted topic, such as the X-factor in Australia. Some famous Tweeters include Ashton Kutcher, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Oliver, Lance Armstrong, Sarah Palin and Kevin Rudd.

Advantages:
• Users can share up-to-date information such as traffic jams, sports results and tv shows with people all over the world
• By having a limit of 140 characters, Twitter forces users to reduce the amount of words used to explain, thereby removing much of the procrastination.
• “It changes classroom dynamics [in that] it can serve both as a means of analysis and an object of analysis and teachers can keep track of a conversation students carry on a particular topic” (Grosseck & Holotescu, 2008, p. 7).

Disadvantages:
• Some celebrities and politicians have accounts in their name set up by users who have no relation to them or their views.
• Twitter does not use real names, instead it assigns users a username, and therefore some users may not know who is actually following them.
• “The twittering going on in a lesson sometimes can be too distracting” (Grosseck & Holotescu, 2008, p. 8)

Stay tuned for my next post (on the learning objects page), which looks at some learning objects available for teachers.

Thanks for you readership,
Russell

The Internet According to the Muppets