Web 2.0 technologies
The emergence of the World Wide Web changed the way in which information is accessed and how one started to research, communicate with others, plan a trip or even prepare classes.
The Web has democratized access to information and online publication and the emergence of Web 2.0, a concept proposed by Tim O’Reilly and MediaLive International, contributed to this democratization, facilitating interaction and online publication.
The following table presents the evolution from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, proposed by O’Reilly (2005).
From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. (O’Reilly, 2005).
The Web is now considered a platform, extremely accessible and in which the ease of publishing online and commenting on posts has made online social networks develop rapidly. This fact contributed to the development of online social interaction and to the development of critical thinking. The process of social interaction and learning was largely stimulated by Hi5, MySpace, Facebook, Linkedin, and Ning, for example.
The online environment becomes stimulating for teachers and students. They can now easily write online on the blog, record a topic on the podcast or make a movie available on YouTube. The work environment becomes always available, from any location, if there is Internet access.
Some tools associated with Web 2.0 that easily fit into the educational context are:
1. Blog, YouTube and Flickr
Created in the late 1990s by Jorn Barger (Barbosa & Granado, 2004), the Weblog refers to a web diary with links to other sites, whose information is organized from the most recent to the oldest, in posts, providing an input index.
Blogs can be open to everyone or just a closed community and can be personal or collective.
(Fig. xxx: Example of a blog designed to organize the Erasmus+ Web 3.0 4.0 5.0 & Green Internet of Things, https://webgiotinalmada.blogspot.com/p/11-october.html)
Orihuela & Santos (2004) mention 3 advantages in using blogs:
– ease of creation and handling of publishing tools;
– availability of interfaces that allow focus on content;
– have the possibility to comment, file, …
Nowadays there is a great diversity of blogs, but the thematic blog predominates (Cruz & Carvalho, 2006).
In the area of Education, the blog can “function as a notebook, portfolio, forum, support for the discipline, it can also be used to make available small sites such as WebQuest and Treasure Hunt, which are activities oriented to research on the Web”, as stated by Carvalho et al (2006: 637). It can also be used in addition to face-to-face teaching as it can include indications of work to be carried out by students and other documents to support their learning.
YouTube, created to increase the sharing of videos, is common knowledge for the majority of the young population. In the Education area, we also have TeacherTube, where teachers can share videos made by them with their students, in a public or private way.
Fig. xx – TeacherTube (https://www.teachertube.com/)
Flickr is a Web site where we can find countless images, photographs, drawings or illustrations, organized by categories, which can be shared, for example, between teachers and students. The teacher can ask students for photographs of landscapes and, after research and selection, these can be uploaded, organized and cataloged in an album on the website, creating an album of landscapes, according to the elements – natural and/or human – that the photographs show.
Fig. xx – Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/explore)
2. Audacity
Publishing audio content on the internet that can be downloaded to mobile devices or iTunes and made available anytime and anywhere is called podcasting. Audacity is a free software that allows recording and editing audio with some quality.
Fig xx: Audacity, Free, Open Source, Cross-platform audio software.
Vídeo “How to use the Audacity program” (https://youtu.be/GeJ8814Wvlg)
The podcast can be used in an educational context, either by the teacher or by the student. In the first case, the teacher can use the podcast as a motivation to approach content or even in the transmission of certain didactic content. In the second case, it is part of an active, constructivist perspective, in which the student builds and publishes their own podcasts.
3. Wiki
This software allows students to develop collaborative work in editing and creating documents on the Web.
Vídeo https://youtu.be/vAFmxzsHYc8
4. CmapsTools.
For Novak and Gowin (1984: 31), concept maps “aim to represent meaningful relationships between concepts in the form of propositions (…) they serve to make clear to both teachers and students the small number of key ideas what they should focus on for a specific learning task”, resulting in a “schematic summary of what has been learned”.
There are several digital tools that can be used to build concept maps, such as the CMaps Tools.
Fig. xxx : Example of a concept map.
The use of concept maps as a teaching and learning technique can develop students’ self-confidence and self-esteem, due to the role they play in their construction and the attention given to their contribution. However, it can also be just a memorization task if students do not attach any meaning to it.
There are several tools available to be used in education, in the domain of Web 2.0. David Andrade http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2014/04/great-list-of-app-based-on-task-you.html) published on his website a set of useful guidelines in the development of teaching and learning.
References
Barbosa, E. & Granado, A. (2004). Weblogs, Diário de Bordo. Porto: Porto Editora.
Carvalho, A. A., Moura, A., Pereira, L. & Cruz, S. (2006). Blogue – uma ferramenta com potencialidades pedagógicas. In A. Moreira, J. Pacheco, S. Crdoso & A. Silva (orgs), Actas do VII Colóquio sobre Questões Curriculares (III Colóquio Luso-Brasileiro) – Globalização e (des)igualdades: os desafios curriculares. Braga: CIED, Universidade do Minho, 635-652.
Cruz, S. & Carvalho, A. (2006). Weblog como Complemento ao Ensino Presencial no 2.º e 3.º Ciclos do Ensino Básico. Revista Prisma.com – Revista de Ciências da Informação e da Comunicação do CETAC, pp. 64 – 87.
O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0. Design patterns and Business models for the next generations of Software. Consultado em setembro de 2022, em http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228
Dandelife, Wiki e Goowy, consultado em https://cmapspublic.ihmc.us/rid=1GGFLBP07-1SXLY4Q-2BHB/dandelife_wiki.pdf, em set 22.
Novak, J.D. & Gowin, D. B. (1999). Aprender a Aprender. Lisboa: Plátano Editora.