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Web 2.0
Web 2.0 technologies are all about empowering the users, you and me, to communicate, to create and share content and to collaborate in ways that were previously impossible on the traditional web. The introduction of new web based tools has resulted in a change from users being seen as consumers of the web to users being content creators. By using these technologies we are able to personalise our own web space and create or join communities to share our ideas and content. The following sections give a brief overview of the most commonly used Web 2.0 tools and if you need convincing about why you should find out more about web 2.0 technologies, take a couple of minutes to watch the video below.
The concept of the digital native is often used these days to describe young people who have
grown up with new media and technologies. This video which contains short interviews with learners and educators in the US gives some insight into the impact
of new media and technology in terms of how the "modus operandi" of young people is changing.
Blogs
A Blog is a website that consists of paragraphs of information, opinion or diary entries that are displayed in chronological order in a journal style and generally allow visitors to add comments. The nature of Blogging is seen as an opportunity for an exchange of views between the blog owner and it's readers. As well as setting up an individual blog it is also possible to set up community blogs which a number of people can post to. Each post is usually "tagged" to enable categorisation of postings in such a way that links to previous or similar posts and/or blogs are facilitated, easily referenced and retrieved by blog search services if they are made public. It is often possible to subscribe to a blog and be notified when there are new postings or links created. The most effective blogs are updated on a regular basis. Blogs do offer an opportunity for reflection and peer-to-peer knowledge building and sharing and can contain a number of different elements of the owners choosing e.g links to favourite websites, RSS feeds and widgets (see sections below).
Popular Blogging Tools
www.blogger.com/start
www.typepad.com
wordpress.com
Popular Blogsearch Tools
technorati.com
blogsearch.google.com
www.blogdigger.com/index.html
Media Sharing Sites
The development of media sharing sites such as You Tube (videos) and Flickr (images) has been accelerated by the ubiquitous nature of digital media. The pervasiveness of digital & mobile technologies has meant that the skills needed to capture and work with digital images and digital video have been simplified and it is now much easier for individuals to use them. These types of websites allow the sharing of media publicly or with selected individuals by uploading the files on to servers.
Many companies, for example, Kodak and Truprint allow a user to upload digital photographs onto their servers and share them with selected friends and family. Flickr is a photo sharing site with more functionality and shares more of the Web 2.0 characteristics. As well as photosharing, collections of photos can be tagged (see social bookmarking) and Flickr is used widely by "Bloggers" as a repository which can feed collections of photos to their blog.
You Tube works in much the same way. Individuals can upload videos which can be instructional, entertaining, or personal and the functionality of the site allows tagging, comments, rating and discussion groups. You Tube allows videos that they host to be embedded into other web pages such as wikis and blogs. Users can subscribe to another user's postings or content that is tagged with particular terms a bit like social networking.
Other video sharing sites to note are VideoJug and TeacherTube.
Podcasts
The term podcasting was inspired by Apple's iPod. Now, however, the term is taken to encompass any hardware and software application that allow the automatic download of audio and increasingly video files for listening or viewing whenever it suits the user.
This automatic download makes use of the Internet's RSS (Really Simple Syndication) standard which automatically delivers them to your computer.
Podcasts can be downloaded from a variety of sources. A good starting point is to use a website such as Podcasting news which has a comprehensive Podcast directory which will list what's available. Alternatively, you might want to use the iTunes store which, once you subscribe to a podcast will automatically download the latest in a series once you've subscribed. Other software is available which will also search for the latest podcast and deliver it to your computer. These are usually free and popular ones include Juice, Doppler and iTunes, as mentioned above. You can also use a search engine like Google to subscribe to podcasts, by storing the RSS feeds in your favourites area.
Podcasting links
Podcasting News - http://www.podcastingnews.com
iTunes - http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/
Juice - http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
Complete Guide to Podcasting - http://poducateme.com/guide/
RSS
RSS feeds are a great way to keep up to date with information recently added to your favourite websites. As opposed to you having to search the web for the information you want, setting up feeds from sites that you use and like means that the information from your trusted sites is fed to you regularly and automatically. The latest version of IE (Internet Explorer 7) includes an option to subscribe to RSS feeds as well as saving "favourites".
The short video embedded below from Lee Lefever explains the concept.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking systems have the following in common:
Users "bookmark" websites by using "tags".
The collection of bookmarked sites are stored centrally on remote servers and can be accessed using a browser.
Collections can be shared.
Websites are organised in a non-hierarchical way with sites appearing in more than one category if the user deems this appropriate.
Social bookmarking depends on the concept of using tags, a keyword that describes a digital object. Users of social networking sites do not use a formal classification system but tag objects in a meaningful way for themselves. The concept of tagging has been expanded and now includes "tag sets" or "tag clouds" whereby the frequency of tags is monitored and collated, and the tag given more prominence on a list. Below is a list of favourite teaching & learning sites displayed in a tag cloud and embedded into this webpage but created and managed with a social bookmarking tool - click on the social bookmarking tag to see some of the tools that you can use.
Social Networking
Social Networking refers to websites that contain a variety of elements chosen by the user which are personalised and shared with other users. Others are invited by recommendation and can be accepted or rejected as appropriate. Elements that can be added include links, photos, blogs, bulletin boards, drawing tools, videos, and widgets.
Popular social networking sites include
http://www.bebo.com/
http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/
http://groups.msn.com
http://www.myspace.com/
http://groups.yahoo.com/
Widgets
A widget is an application that can be embedded within a webpage that provides dynamic content that is fed from somewhere else. Widgets are used to enhance the content of a webpage and are now commonplace in blogs, wikis, social networks and personal homepages. Widgets are available from a variety of sources and are also known as gadgets, badges, flakes and snippets.
Sources of Widgets
Widgetbox - http://www.widgetbox.com/
Snipperoo - http://www.snipperoo.com/
Google Gadgets - http://desktop.google.com/plugins/
Konfabulator - Yahoo's widget gallery - http://www.widgetgallery.com/
Widgipedia - http://www.widgipedia.com/
WIKIs
A wiki is a social software tool that allows individuals to collaboratively develop a website. Any member of a wiki can create, edit and delete pages using a simple text editor, requiring few technical skills.
Wikis allow content to be viewed and edited by members, can incorporate audio, images and video. Importantly, the editing history is stored so that at any time the wiki can revert to a previous version and tags can be used to make them easily searchable.
Probably the most famous wiki in the world is Wikipedia, the free collaboratively written encyclopedia, maintained by volunteers throughout the world.