Web 2.0 and Education: what it means for us all
“You can only tell the shape of things by looking at their edges.”
ACE 2006 paper.
Note :paper will be accompanied by a demonstration of several Web2.0 applications relevant to
education.
Dr Ken Price
Department of Education Tasmania/ Tasmanian Society for Information Technology in Education
Web 2.0 and Education: what it means for us all
Background
There are significant opportunities offered to education by the group of technologies often referred
to as Web 2.0 or the read/write web. The Web 2.0 concept involves the web changing from a set
of linked web pages that are largely information sources to a full set of web-based applications that
draw on services from one another. While the term Web2.0 has become almost a mocked
catchphrase, it is convenient as a label for this concept.
Common web applications that embody these ideas are Flickr, Google Maps and Google Earth,
digg, del.icio.us, Wikipedia, MySpace and Technorati.. Generically, blogs, wikis, social software
and podcasting all fall into this general category.
While some educators have embraced aspects of Web 2.0, there are many more opportunities to be
realised. By examining the nature of these technologies, the inherent value they have for education
and the challenges faced by schools and education systems in implementing large-scale technology
change, we can form some strategies for using these opportunities to our advantage.
Challenges faced by systems offering educational computing
applications
The provision of software tools at an education system level typically occurs in response to demand
from teachers who have used some externally-provided tools and see potential for educational use.
Education tends to pick up on technology after it has reached maturity in other workplaces or in
social use. For example, in most Australian education systems the provision of centralised email,
chat servers, blogs, wikis etc occurred only after these were in widespread use elsewhere.
In addition, education systems tend to be cautious in adopting any new technologies. Systems are
rarely wealthy and cannot risk an expensive mistake, as they have a large and largely captive user
base that will rely on any new product. On the other hand they do not have the ability to recover
costs for a successful product from a larger user base either. Thus they are unlikely to embark on a
cutting-edge implementation.
As web applications become more complex and specialized, it is increasingly unlikely that an
education system can compete in developing them. For example, few education systems would have
the resources spare to develop a product like Google Earth, and even fewer would be willing to
speculatively develop a product of such novelty and complexity.
Education systems also face issues of security, privacy and protection of students, which are not so
important in the adult world where users can be responsible for their own action. Such concerns
make official approval of use of non-education applications rather problematic: McLeod (2006)
identifies that in some cases school systems may choose to deny access to non-school applications
for this reason.
As a result, systemic provision necessarily lags the use of these tools in the non-education world.
Current state of Web 2.0
In March 2006 CNN Money published a list of its predictions for rising companies that will
underpin the “Next Net”. These are worth examining from the point of view of their potential for
education. They are given below using the categories provided by CNN. (Schonfeld, Malik &
Copeland: 2006).
SOCIAL
MEDIA
MASHUPS
THE NEW
AND FILTERS PHONE
THE
WEBTOP
UNDER THE
HOOD
Digg
News aggregator
Why it is
important:
The site's links are
picked by the
readership, which
has been doubling
every three
months; news
items with the most
votes make the
homepage.
Bloglines
Online feed
reader
Why it is
important:
The site collects
blogs and news
from all over the
Web and presents
it in one
consistent,
updated,
multifeed
mashup.
Fonality
Open-source
telephony
software
Why it is
important:
It sells a $1,000
box that allows a
PC to use opensource software
to mimic a PBX
system that costs
five times as
much.
Brightcove
Internet TV
distributor
Why it is
important:
It's creating a videodistribution platform
over the Web for
producers large and
small
Last.fm
Social radio
Why it is
important:
Its software creates
a personalized
streaming radio
station based on
the digital music
you already listen
to, shares your
playlist on the
Web, and suggests
music from other
closely related
Eurekster (San
Francisco)
Search mashup
Why it is
important:
This do-ityourself search
engine, or swicki,
allows you to
define sites you
want to search,
post the results
on your blog or
website, and get a
cut of any search
SIPphone
Internet phone
software
Why it is
important:
Its Gizmo Project
application
allows free PCto-PC calls,
cheap PC-tophone calls, and
sound effects
JotSpot
Wikis and online
spreadsheets
Why it is
important:
A pioneer of Web
collaboration
apps, a.k.a. wikis,
it has unveiled its
new Tracker
application,
which provides a
powerful, highly
collaborative
online
spreadsheet.
30Boxes
Online calendar
Why it is
important:
This Web-based
software allows
families and
groups to create
private social
networks,
organize events,
track schedules,
and share photos;
it may soon allow
you to save
Jigsaw
Business contact
database
Why it is
important:
In exchange for their
own contact lists,
salespeople use this
site to access a
virtual Rolodex of
managers at nearly
150,000 companies.
playlists.
ads your
audience clicks
on.
Newsvine
Collaborative
publisher
Why it is
important:
Readers vote and
comment on stories
but can also
organize their own
pages and write
their own stories,
for which they
collect 90 percent
of associated ad
revenues.
Simply Hired
Job search
engine
Why it is
important:
It searches nearly
4.5 million
listings on other
job and corporate
sites; subscribers
receive an RSS
feed or e-mail
alert when a job
that meets their
parameters pops
up.
Iotum
Presence
management
software
Why it is
important:
With its app,
users will be able
to control where
and when they
receive voice or
text data, routing
calls to their
phones, e-mail,
or RSS feed-and
blocking calls
from, say,
creditors.
Tagworld
Social networking
Why it is
important:
With cutting-edge
Web software
enabling blogs,
photo and music
sharing, online
dating, and more,
members confront
a rich smorgasbord
of ways to interact,
and everything can
be tagged for easy
searching.
Technorati
Blog search
engine
Why it is
important:
The site filters
the almost 30
million existing
blogs, shows how
many other blogs
link to a
particular post,
and can rank
blogs by topic.
Vivox
Peer-to-peer
voice technology
Why it is
important:
Its service
integrates voice,
video,
messaging, and
socialnetworking
capabilities into
existing data
networks.
phone numbers
as hyperlinks and
make calls by
simply clicking
on a link.
37Signals
Online project
management
Why it is
important:
Its Basecamp
app, elegant and
inexpensive,
enables the
creation, sharing,
and tracking of
to-do lists, files,
performance
milestones, and
other key project
metrics; related
app Backpack,
recently released,
is a powerful
online organizer
for individuals.
Writely
Online word
processing
Why it is
important:
It enables online
creation of
documents, opens
them to
collaboration by
anyone
anywhere, and
simplifies
publishing the
end result on a
website as a blog
entry.
SimpleFeed
Opt-in RSS
marketing
Why it is
important:
By allowing RSS
feeds to be
customized to the
desires of each
recipient and tracked
individually, the site
makes such feeds a
powerful marketing
tool
Salesforce.com
Platform for online
enterprise software
Why it is
important:
It pioneered Webbased software and is
trying to become a
marketplace and host
for other online apps
through its
AppExchange.
YouTube
Video sharing
Why it is
important:
This site lets
people upload,
watch, and share
millions of video
clips. All videos
are converted to
Flash (a Webtailored format for
graphics and
video), making
them easy to
import into blogs
or webpages.
Trulia
Real estate
mashup
Why it is
important:
Combining home
listings from
agents' websites
with Google
Maps, the site is
becoming a hit in
California and is
expanding into
other regions.
Wink
Tag search
engine
Why it is
important:
Yahoo!
By searching
Hoping to
user-generated
dominate social
tags on Next Net
media, it's
sites like
gobbling up
promising startups Del.icio.us and
(Del.icio.us, Flickr, Digg, Wink
filters the Web so
Webjay) and
experimenting with users can sort
links into
social search (My
different
Web 2.0) that
ranks results based collections and
add their own
on shared
tags and
bookmarks and
bookmarks.
tags.
Incumbent To
Watch:
Incumbent To
Watch:
eBay (Skype)
The pioneer in
the field and still
the front-runner,
Skype brings
together free
calling, IM, and
video calling
over the Web;
eBay will use it
to create deeper
connections
between buyers
and sellers.
Zimbra
Online e-mail
Why it is
important:
Taking aim at
Microsoft
Outlook, its
Ajax-based
application can,
among other
things, bring up
your calendar for
any date your
mouse
encounters,
launch Skype for
any phone
number, or
retrieve a Google
map for any
address.
Incumbent To
Watch:
Six Apart
Blogging tools
Why it is
important:
The company helped
kick off and sustain
the Next Net with its
Moveable Type
blogging software
and TypePad
blogging service.
Microsoft
By rolling out
Windows Live,
Office Live, and
other Next Netcentric software,
it hopes to grab a
dominant -- if not
monopolistic -share of the
webtop, which
Bill Gates
regards as a
crucial strategic
priority.
Amazon
It's becoming a
major Web platform
by opening up its
software protocols
and encouraging
anyone to use its
catalog and other
data; its Alexa Web
crawler, which
indexes the Net, can
be used as the basis
for other search
engines, and its
Mechanical Turk site
solicits humans
across cyberspace to
do things that
computers still can't
do well, such as
identify images or
Incumbent To
Watch:
transcribe podcasts
Incumbent To
Watch:
Google
Already the
ultimate Web
filter through
general search as
well as blog,
news, shopping,
and now video
search, it's
encouraging
mashups of
Google Maps and
search results,
and offers a free
RSS reader.
As the categories indicate, these companies are operating in areas that are largely Web2.0. Yet there
are few schools making use of these or similar technologies.
The key elements of these and similar new products and companies are:
- entirely web-based,
- aimed at re-using information services (via web services, RSS feeds, the trading or
aggregating of user data, the combination of map information with other information, the
smarter use of IP-based communication etc),
- reliance and promotion of a significant social component: they connect people with people
and allow collaboration (eg the collaborative writing tool writely.com) They create a sense
of ownership and place, and allow people to see what other similar people are doing or
using,
- provision of ways for users to create and manage their own content,
- the utilisation of user-centric ways of organizing and managing information (for example,
products like Flickr and Eurekster make use of a community of users to build a navigation or
“folksomony” rather than relying on a pre-determined taxonomy,
- high levels of user customization and personalization of the service,
- many provide some level of service for free.
Whether these companies achieve commercial success is secondary to the characteristics they
exhibit.
How we might respond to Web 2.0?
A difficult situation has developed. We have a range of new and potentially valuable services, but
education systems are not likely to be able to respond rapidly enough to provide them.
However, all is not lost. Large numbers of students already make use of free tools such as Skype,
Flickr, Del.icio.us outside of school. Websites such as MySpace, which provides free personal
blogs, have proven enormously popular. According to internet traffic monitor Alexa, MySpace ranks
in the top 10 most visited sites on the web (Alexa, March 2006).
The ability to create and publish information instantly is a feature of many Web 2.0 applications.
Becta in their Emerging Technologies for Learning report note the increasing importance of this
aspect of technology in everyday life (Becta, 2006: 10).
Despite the widespread use of Web 2.0 tools for content creation, some schools are unaware of their
existence and few promote the use of such tools.
As Stephen Heppel (Heppel, 2006) sees it:
I'm not surprised to read …that most of the activities involving broadband are teacher-led (or what
I call the Dick Turpin style of teaching - stand and deliver) because we're not encouraging this
symmetry, with pupils creating content and using broadband to share it with others. There needs to
be this peer-to-peer type of learning and this why broadband hasn't yet delivered the properly
personalised curriculum. Sadly, today, broadband is about delivery and not about what it truly
should be: participation.”
Most students require no teaching to make use of these tools, and often use them without the
knowledge of their teachers. As digital natives they see these tools as a logical way to interact and
achieve their personal goals. The Pew Internet Study (Lenhart, Horrigan & Fallows: 2004) showed
that large numbers of young people are actively creating digital products, outside of schools.
Teachers are amongst the last people they would turn to for assistance in the use of these tools: peer
support is seen as far more useful
One response for schools or systems is to ignore or prohibit the use of Web 2.0 applications until the
school or system can provide them in a controlled manner. This has an advantage of safety and
security, but means we risk students seeing schools as backwaters that fail to meet their needs.
Already we have the situation where about 75% of US teenage youth log onto the internet most
often at home, compared to about 20% who log on most often at school. (Lenhart, Madden &,
Hitlin, 2005). We don’t need to provide more reasons for students to see schools as poor relatives in
the digital world.
A second, and more productive approach is to look at ways in which schools can capitalise on the
technologies students have available to them independently of school. This provides students with a
way to see education as a real part of their world, and while some tools may have limitations the
benefits outweigh them. At the same time, systems and schools can learn from the experience and
feed the knowledge into the slower process of providing suitable tools at system level. The need to
train students in the operation of these tools is minimal: do schools need to teach students how to
use a mobile phone? However, schools have a very important role in providing an educational
context in which these tools provide a solution.
An example of this process is the way in which email was introduced into most school systems over
the past decade or so. Initial use of email by students was via home ISPs or through free providers
such as Hotmail. Over time, schools that made use of this external email demonstrated its value in
supporting learning through access to online expertise, collaborative projects, etc. A case gradually
grew for making email a systemically-provided service to all students. Finally, many education
systems responded to this case (which may have been explicit or implicit) and provided the
necessary service.
Similar patterns are evident with systemic provision of instant messaging, personal web spaces
(such as blogs) and file storage and learning delivery systems that are accessible outside of the
school environment.
It is likely that this pattern is almost inevitable in the introduction of new technologies to education,
and that by making use of external services in innovative ways we can provide students with
authentic experiences and at the same time build the knowledge base for designing systemic services
that can support teaching and learning.
Our challenge, then, as innovative educators is to identify new and emerging technologies, envision
how they can address curriculum needs, and encourage their use in education, while also monitoring
what we see with a view to creating tools that are more suited to education.
Innovative teachers have always seen the potential for using new technologies to support education,
and have been able to fit the technology to the task in a way that allows educational goals (rather
than technology).to drive the process.
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