Introduction to Web 2.0Education in distributed networks

Stephan Ridgway, 2009TAFE NSW, Sydney Institute, Workforce Development Unit

http://wiki.tafensw.edu.au/sydney/mylearning/index.php/Introduction_to_Web_2.0

Image by paradigm4

What is web2.0?

A phrase made famous by Tim O'Reilly @ a conference in 2004

Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design, that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications; such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. - Wikipedia, 20 April 2009

Web 2.0 defining characteristics• the Web as a platform, web services which use the browser, easy to use

• User generated content the driving force

• Easy to create, distribute and share content, often collaboratively via RSS

• Folksonomic content classification using TAGS

• The "Network Effect" - services improve the more people who join - e.g del.icio.us, flickr

• Makes it easy to find other users with similar interests and form online communities – Social Software

Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0• Web 1.0 was about reading, Web 2.0 is about writing • Web 1.0 was about companies, Web 2.0 is about communities • Web 1.0 was about client-server, Web 2.0 is about peer to peer • Web 1.0 was about HTML, Web 2.0 is about XML • Web 1.0 was about home pages, Web 2.0 is about blogs • Web 1.0 was about portals, Web 2.0 is about RSS • Web 1.0 was about taxonomy, Web 2.0 is about tags • Web 1.0 was about wires, Web 2.0 is about wireless • Web 1.0 was about owning, Web 2.0 is about sharing • Web 1.0 was about Netscape, Web 2.0 is about Google • Web 1.0 was about web forms, Web 2.0 is about web applications • Web 1.0 was about dialup, Web 2.0 is about broadband • Web 1.0 was about hardware costs, Web 2.0 is about bandwidth costs

CopaceticWeb 1.0 Web 2.0

Examples of Social Software • Blogs & online journals - Blogger, LiveJournal, Edublogs

• Web-based RSS feed readers - Bloglines, Google Reader

• Wikis & collaborative writing tools - Wikispaces, Mediawiki

• Social networking sites - MySpace, Yahoo 360

• E-portfolios and Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) - elgg.net Ning

• Media publishing & sharing - Flickr YouTube

• Social bookmarking - del.icio.us, Diigo

• Podcasting, vblogging - Odeo, Podomatic, blip.tv Viddler

RSS – The distributed model

• RSS is the connecting fabric of web2.0 services, providing the conduit for information flows between distributed networks.

• Means to subscribe, syndicate and remix (mashups)

• All about the connected information flows between decentralised nodes, characterised by a willingness to share, mix and feed.

Image by Dion Hinchcliffe€

Blogs & Online Journals

• "blog" is derived from "Web log”, 1997

• Online diary, regularly updated & displayed with the newest entry at the top

• blog combines text, images and links to other blogs

• Very easy to create and publish i.e. blogger

• Bloggers speak to other bloggers via links & comments

• RSS used for distribution & syndication

Educational uses for blogs• Students can use blogs to process and record what they learn. • Teachers can use blogs to process and record what they teach. • Flexibility for learners - students can catch-up if they miss a

class. • A summary of a course that prospective students or new

teachers can refer to. • Students can refer to each other's blog and support each

other's learning. • Other faculty can refer to course blogs of their colleagues and

improve team teaching. • Topical and subject focused blogs can be an engaging learning

resource. • Fosters a Community of Networked Learners

Source: The Networked Learning workshops, Leigh Blackall

Wiki’s

• A wiki is a website that can be easily edited from within a web-browser.

• They are especially suited for collaborative authoring. • Can be edited by anyone on the network or by

members of a defined community• All edits are archived and can be rolled back to at any

time• Wikipedia - the free, collaboratively built online

encyclopedia - is the best known example of a wiki.

Blogs vs Wikis

Blogs• personal, less collaborative, a post is owned by poster • typically monologue with audience commentary • text is considered to be static: once posted, the posting doesn't

change much• immediate: written in the moment, written of the moment

Wiki’s• public & open to collaboration• aim is creation of fluid documents• knowledge is ephemeral: it changes, can be changed

Examples

Blogs• Our Class 2006 - A blog for an Adult Migrant English

Programme (AMEP)class at St George College of TAFE

• NSW LearnScope

Wikis• Wikipedia - the free, collaboratively built online

encyclopedia • myLearning

Tagging

• Tagging is a method of categorisation whereby key words are assigned to web based resources by users

• Each user "tags" the resources arbitrarily according to their own personal preferences.

• tags are shared (rss) & grouped to form knowledge sharing networks

Taxonomy - The science of classification

• From the greek verb:• Taxis = "to classify" • Nomos = "law, science, economy"

• Hierarchical-enumerative top down tree like structure

• Hierarchies designed and maintained by experts

• Repositories catalogued by experts - libraries

• Structure imposed on the world of objects

• Centralised classification

Folksonomy - Social classification

• Folk + Taxonomy meaning that it emerges from the people

• Open democratic system • Constantly evolving based on user interactions and

consensus • tags capture the social fabric at that moment in time • Structure is an emergent property • Well suited to rapidly changing heterogeneous

information sources such as the internet and social networks

• Distributed classification

Web services that use Tags• Del.icio.us - A social bookmarking site that allows

users to bookmark many sites and then tag them with many descriptive words, allowing other people to search by those terms to find pages that other people found useful.

• Flickr - A service that allows users to tag images with many specific nouns, verbs, and adjectives that describe the picture. This is then search-able.

• Gmail - A web-mail site that was one of the first to allow categorization of objects using tags, known as "labels" on emails.

• LibraryThing - A social book cataloguing and community website, tags feature heavily here.

• Technorati - A weblog search engine.

Podcasting & Vblogging• Grew out of the blogging movement, form of audio blogging• Uses same subscription & distribution model pioneered by the

blogging movement based upon RSS • About audio when and were you want it• Gains mass visibility in 2005, with podcasting support in Apple

iTunes• Easy to produce and distribute

Networks