Web 2.o Reflection
Web 2.0 is still developing and will be subject to substantial changes as tools and applications evolve into Web 3.0 and beyond. It is likely that some of the clashes between formal structures of education provision and less formal technology practices will recede over time. As Annette Wang reminds us, the internet is still only in an ‘adolescent’ stage of development, and as a result is playful, over-emotional and profoundly informal. Yet many of the issues raised in this Commentary will remain relevant to the discussion of whatever web technologies are prevalent in the near future, when Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia have been superseded and usurped by new tools and applications.
Discussion of Web 2.0 and learning needs to move beyond asking whether Web 2.0 applications ‘work’ in education or enhance learning. Instead, educational technologists need to consider how Web 2.0 can be shaped and designed along educational lines, and how education can be re-imagined in the light of new technologies. Educators should now be striving to work with technologists to shape the learning technologies of the near future. Learners require Web 2.0 technologies that are fit for purpose alongside pedagogies and practices that are too. Only then can the undoubted educational potentials of Web 2.0 be fully realized.
http://www.tlrp.org/pub/documents/TELcomm.pdf
Web 2.0 is still developing and will be subject to substantial changes as tools and applications evolve into Web 3.0 and beyond. It is likely that some of the clashes between formal structures of education provision and less formal technology practices will recede over time. As Annette Wang reminds us, the internet is still only in an ‘adolescent’ stage of development, and as a result is playful, over-emotional and profoundly informal. Yet many of the issues raised in this Commentary will remain relevant to the discussion of whatever web technologies are prevalent in the near future, when Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia have been superseded and usurped by new tools and applications.
Discussion of Web 2.0 and learning needs to move beyond asking whether Web 2.0 applications ‘work’ in education or enhance learning. Instead, educational technologists need to consider how Web 2.0 can be shaped and designed along educational lines, and how education can be re-imagined in the light of new technologies. Educators should now be striving to work with technologists to shape the learning technologies of the near future. Learners require Web 2.0 technologies that are fit for purpose alongside pedagogies and practices that are too. Only then can the undoubted educational potentials of Web 2.0 be fully realized.
http://www.tlrp.org/pub/documents/TELcomm.pdf