Learning Revolution 2.0

Learners are leading the revolution to take control of their environment through social networking. The LMS is dead. Instructional designers are obsolete. Taxonomies become folksonomies. Let me tell you how the new tools of Web 2.0 will change the learning space.




What is Web 2.0?

. The “Web as a platform” – delivering and using applications/through a web browser.

. The transition of web sites from isolated information entities to sources of content and functionality, thus becoming computing platforms serving web application to users.

. A social phenomenon embracing an approach to generating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralized of authority, freedom to share and reuse.

. Enhanced organization and categorization of content, emphasizing tagging, linking and folksonomies.

. Facilitates participation, collaboration, sharing and democracy to driverelevancy of content creation/consumption.

Applicability to Learning?

. Age of participation
. Fostering and promotion of Community
. “You” connected to “Me” and “Everybody” as a subject matter expert on “Something” with real time collaboration, interaction and feedback. Individuals contribute their knowledge and experiences to the learning environment

The six components of Enterprise 2.0
SEARCH: For any information platform to be valuable, its users must be able to find what they are looking for?

LINKS: Facilitating better search, Links are the excellent guide to what’s important and provides structure to online content. As more links can be built by larger communities, it is easier to find more relevant information.

AUTHORING: Most people have something to contribute, whether its knowledge, insight, experience, a comment, a fact, an edit, a link, and so on, and authorship is a way to harness these contribution.

TAGS: Supporting the categorization of the content by the many rather than the few.

EXTENSIONS: Providing users with association of recommended content- “if you like this” “you may like that”

SIGNALS: Ability to highlight to user when new information has been created. Include email and syndication(RSS)

Web 2.0 Enablers

Social Software

Enable people to participate, connect or collaborate through the web resulting in online communities.

Tools include: User Profile, Instant Messaging, Text Chat, Internet Forums, Blogs, Wikis, Collaborative real time editor.

Wiki:

Website that allows visitors to add, remove, edit and change content, typically without the need for registration. It also allows for linking among any number of pages. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. Examples include Wikipedia, LyricWiki

Blogs:

Slang for weblog, it is the user driven website where content entries are authored in journal style. Blogs evolved from online diaries and provide mechanism for people to create content and commentary on anything of interest. Features of blogs include the ability to readers to comment. Blogs are evolving to include different media types including Vlog (Video Log), Photoblog (Photos) and Tumblelogs (mixed media and commentary)

Folksonomies:

User generated taxonomy use to categorize, find, link to and comment on content using tagging. Because the identification of content is facilitated by the community, it can be more relevant, responsive to change and personal.

Tagging:

A keyword term associated with or assign to a piece of information, thus describing the item and enabling keyword based classification of information it is applied to. The power of community based tagging is associating more meaning and context to the content.

Tag Clouds:

A visual depiction to content tags used on website or specific page to convey the key concepts and weighted relevancy of the information. Selecting single tag within the tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag.

Syndication:

Syndication of content on website allows end users to make use of another sites date in multiple context’s, varying from a website, browser plugin or application. Protocols that permit syndication include RSS and ATOM. Syndication allows content to come to users rather than users going to the content.

Podcasts:

A digital media file that is distributed over the internet using syndication feeds for playback on media players and computers. Facilitates people to create content and share audio information with listeners. A podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to downloaded automatically using software capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or ATOM.


Web 2.0 Sites worth checking out:
Netvibes
Flickr
YouTube
Facebook
Wikipedia
Digg
Del.icio.us