Thing 5

The next level of interactive learning has arrived. With Web 2.0, the web is no longer a high-tech billboard, it is now capable of creating multimedia experiences in a relatable manner. WEB 1.0 was awe inspiring in its inception, but began to stale as demands for a fresher approach began. Enter the new world of interactive communications and user designed web pages. For many, it began with a guy named Tom and a social phenomena named MySpace. In a short time, web developers were designing a wide range of plug-in tools to enhance the social network. Suddenly, it seemed that everyone was demanding "mini-htlm" animations that appeared to blow kisses or characters that dance a jig.

The obvious demand for more applications and better interactive programs transformed the web from a messenger to a digital meeting place for singles to meet, friends to chat, shoppers to explore, and students to extract meaning for their latest assignment.  Today, a multitude of websites offer interactive games, artwork, digital enhancement, web publication programs, and a variety of educational offerings. 

The interactive characteristics of the new web, coupled with the ability of people to create content for the web and post or publish their content to the Internet are all part of Web 2.0.  The Atomic Learning link provides a multimedia podcast of the development of learning media from the one-room schoolhouse to the information age and a read-only web containing information Web 1.0, so called due to software publishing terminology, to a new information age featuring a variety of options from blogs, to wikis, podcasting, social networking, tagging and RSS options on a read-write web called Web 2.0. 

Web 2.0 offers a rich variety of options to educators to create and publish meaningful classroom content to reinforce more traditional classroom models of lecture and group activities. In his blog, Steve Hargadon champions this new concept in his work titled, "Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education," by presenting his top ten list of the obvious advantages of this method of learning. He highlights the wave of new information, the expansion of online publishing, and the trend towards participation. He optimistically declares that as we expand our knowledge, we should immediately improve our experience by writing about these experiences and publish it on the web.

He declares that social networking presents a vast variety of learning and discussion avenues that students may explore including this excerpt: "from consuming to producing, from authority to transparency, from expert to facilitator, and from the lecture to the hallway..." He proclaims that learning is experiencing a revolution in the new Web 2.0 environment.

The new Web 2.0 expands how teachers can teach on a level that students will naturally gravitate towards, it represents the dawning of a new age in learning.