Web 2.0 - Education for the Future
What is "Web 2.0"?
Quite simply, Web 2.0 is a term used to describe modern online technology. In the early days of the Internet, websites were seen as static sources in which content was created by a creator and viewed at a later time by users (this has retroactively become known as "Web 1.0"). As online resources became more popular, more people began to add to the Internet. As time went on, users expected to be able to interact with content (and with other users) and to contribute to it, which is referred to as "user empowerment" by Rouse (2011).
Nowadays, we are in the midst of the Web 2.0 era. Examples of Web 2.0 applications and technology include (but are not limited to) blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and social networking (Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Skype and WordPress are all well-known examples of Web 2.0 tools). Technology that may have been unthinkable only a decade or two ago is routinely used by many today (and in the same vein, the same may be true of us in a decade or two!).
So what does this have to do with K-12 education? Students are already comfortable with technology (computers and cellular phones for example) and use it on a regular bais. According to a study led by Pew Research, 93% of American teenagers have access to a computer (no mention of Internet connection capability was made, but it is presumed to be only slightly less than this percentage). In addition, three quarters of teens regularly access the Internet on their mobile devices (on a smartphone, for instance) (Cortesi, Duggan, Gasser, Lenhart, Madden; 2013). With the proliferation of a technology that students are already using, there is an enormous opportunity to adapt this technology for use in educational settings.
In this online book, we will explore four lesser-known Web 2.0 tools (for differing age groups) that we feel will complement and add quality to teaching.
