Survey of Web 2.0 in Education

Interesting video response made to the YouTube video "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us" by Michael Wesch. Discussion centres around the internet in reality just being written text or video being transmitted. What participation there is, is created to simulate real life social interaction and heading for a virtual reality.

[This authors note: However, IMHO this misses the point that it is not the web adapting to us, but us adapting to the tools the internet can provide. The tools were not designed to mimick natural interaction. The web seems to be heading along two paths of interaction and collaboration. a) Those tools which build on current paterns of collaboration and interaction, eg email, wiki's, Google Docs, Vyew.com and are developing further to enahnce this collaboration, eg incorporation of calendars into email, calendar sharing, mash ups, etc, but in essence refining and building on the skills we acquired to use these forms of internet communication. The other direction the web appears to be taking is trying to imitate reality or augment reality such as Second Life. The issue here is that social interaction in reality occurs on so many different levels with different channels of communication, such as verbal and non verbal communications (verbal nuances, tone, body language, facial expression, physical limitations) which for true reality need to be replicated and for others to be able react to them. Of course mentioning physical limitations opens a whole new can of worms, but an exmple is how would we react if in real life we could always see somebody waving to us from over a mile away or more? Another example is how does a partially sighted or sight impaired individual respond to visual signals given on the web? Can it be done? yes, but should it?]

Link to paper by Kipp (2007) looking at tagging practices on Research Oriented social bookmarking sites.

"Stingy Scholar" blog lists good sites for free educational resources. Via Google "crowdsourcing & education".

Claims to be first community aiming at crowdsourcing. Seems to be a market place for ideas, - no obvious outcomes. Education page has various people's proposals related to education. Via Google "crowdsourcing & education".

Via Google "podcast & education". Has themes, but still not enough guide to content.

USA site. Home page has directory of all subjects, by theme and sub-theme - education is just 1 theme.

Has alphabetic list of themes, but at level below that, not sorted, so would take ages to find out what's there. 37,000 podcasts listed. Found via Google "podcast & education".

List of podcasts from all over the globe, in schools 11+.

Via Recap - Schools - schools 11+. (15 links to global cases.)

Small global E-Group of podcasters, with examples of good practice. Based in London, Yorkshire, Scotland, Singapore, Los Angeles and Georgia USA.

Link from Guardian link 18/9/07

Short post about "Scuttle" a social bookmarking application you can host on your own server. Also comments about problems social bookmarking sites can have such as being used for spam.

Academic media course on journalism - critical view of Web 2.0. Lots of interesting looking refs. Via Google "crowdsourcing & education"

More of an aside, but an article reflecting Bill Thompson's own concerns about lack of teaching in schools about ICT safety and security.

Key paper recommended by Neil Selwyn

Key paper recommended by Neil Selwyn

This is an interesting idea. This is more or less the way forty-somethings have decided to use Twitter: can the kids join in too?

BBC News article regarding developments for social networking sites, including Bebo interface tools being possible to use in Facebook.

Full article by Tracy Caldwell (Jan 2007) referred to by Charles Crook looking at JISC's work looking at Web 2.0 and some of the issues raised such as the ease of copying and pasting and the subsequent potential or actual infringement of intellectual property rights or copyrights.