The first article entitled
“Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning?” by Bryan
Alexander gave me good insight into the idea of how emerging technology is
changing the learning process. The introduction of “social software” ,as the
article calls it, has made the sharing of information and the learning process
in general, more collaborative and no longer static or linear in nature.
Technologies like blogs, wikis, and social networking sites have allowed people
to not only access new information, but actively contribute to the learning
process of others by editing and sharing information as well. Being relatively
new to the concept of Web 2.0, this article introduced me to a new term that I
had not previously heard about, “folksonomy”. After reading more about the
term, I realized that I have seen folksonomic metadata before, but I did not
associate that term with the content. Basically, I understand this idea to be a
description of the way in which individuals generate new content that they
attach to existing content in order for the content to be more relative to the
user. Some of the examples that the article gives in relation to this idea,
deal with the action of social bookmarking. I suppose that most people that are
familiar with social networking sites are also familiar with the idea of “tagging”
and bookmarking pages and information. I have had limited experience with this
and therefore am learning more as I progress throughout my coursework. I do
know from my own experience, that bookmarking pages can be a convenient way to
quickly locate and move between information.
The article goes on to
discuss different sites that first allowed users to in essence “personalize”
their information gathering process, by “tagging” information. Some of the
sites mentioned are Del.icio.us, Shadows.com, and rawsugar.com. Wikis are also
discussed in this article, with Wikipedia being mentioned as one of the most
notable. I have always been a bit skeptical of Wikipedia myself, because of the
idea that anyone can edit or contribute to the information presented on the
site. I realize that this is the idea behind it and the purpose of these kinds
of “social networking platforms”, as the article calls them, but I wonder about
the validity of the information that is presented there. Perhaps there are
measures in place that I am not aware of for checking the information. I am
certainly far from an expert when it comes to these kinds of sites, although I
hope to learn more as I continue my educational journey. While I do have my
reservations about wikis, the author’s mention of the program JotSpotLive
peeked my interest. This program takes the concept of group collaboration and
makes multiple documents available for all group members to view and edit. It
seems as though this would be quite beneficial to use in a group learning
assignment or simply to allow individuals to collaborate on more than one
project. I was not aware that such a program existed before reading about this
and I am interested in learning more about it.
As I read more about ideas
mentioned in the article pertaining to the use of social writing platforms in
higher education, I am beginning to better understand some of the benefits of
incorporating this technology into the learning environment. Allowing students
to actively collaborate on assignments using these formats allows for group
learning to take place at a pace established, in part, by the participants.
Learners are in some ways, more invested in the learning process. The article
goes on to discuss blogging and various ways to search within the blogosphere.
Being relatively new to the world of blogging, I am just beginning to see how
much it has influenced society and consequently brought about changes to
education as well. I had originally viewed blogging as simply a way for
individuals to publicly express their opinions to the outside world, but after
reading this article, I have come to realize that blogs can also be good
learning tools. I suppose that I had never really stopped to think about the fact
that many bloggers tend to link pertinent information to their sites, thus
making their blog a more informative tool for readers because the readers can
further investigate ideas and concepts highlighted in the blog. Many blogs also
integrate news information. One service mentioned in the article that I found
to be quite interesting was entitled Memorandum. With this service, users can
examine topics and find both “journalistic accounts and blogospheric opinion”
related to the topics. The author compares it to the style of a newspaper, but
states that it draws from “thousands of sources”. I can imagine that this would
be a very helpful tool for research purposes and I am interested in exploring
it further.
Overall, I have to say
that I found this article to be extremely informative. Having known little
about various Web 2.0 tools, I was able to learn about several different types,
as well as ways that they could be utilized for educational purposes. I know
that I have a great deal more to learn and I have no doubt that it will take
awhile for me to further understand many of the ideas introduced in this
article. One thing that I do know however, is that this article has provided me
with information on several tools and programs that I am eager to further explore.
Source:
Alexander, B. (2006). Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for
teaching and learning?
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