web 0.2 in education
INTRODUCTION
“India can become one of the
developing countries in the world by year 2020, if we adopt technology as our
tool. For this, the teaching community should change its mindset and enthuse
the students by means of technology”
-Abdul KALAM
(2004)
Computer occupies an
important place in world today. Nehru admits technology as “Our major window on the
modern world”. Any one, who can know
computer, he can keep touch with the whole world. Learning English is very
important in the non-English speaking countries like India. However, developing
modern technological support for effective English learning is a critical issue
in the developing countries like India. The development of language learning
technologies recently mobilized, portable, and personalized. Web 2.0 is an uncertain
and unclear concept, which is
understood in different ways by different people. Web 2.0 refers to a second-generation.
There is no specific Web 2.0 program or software. Web 2.0 is merely a commonly
used marketing label.
Web 1.0
World Wide Web (www) that
is “read only” to a Web 2.0 that is being described as the “Read Write Web.”
Instead of content that was for the most part static, we are starting to see
the ability to remix content in different ways, in order to suit our needs. The
Web is evolving to become more like an area for social and idea networking. The
web surfer negotiates the connections within a social or idea network,
exchanges bits of content, creates something new, and then the cycle begins
again. Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) content, but Really Simple Syndication
(RSS) and Atom feeds in particular, is increasingly becoming a standard for
sharing data between these web applications. There is loosely boundary
definition of the term Web 1.0 but this term emerged when the Web 2.0 term was
introduced. Web 1.0 refers to all web applications before arising of Web 2.0 (Anderson, 2007).
Web 2.0 – MEANING
In
the 21st century, Web 2.0 term states a renaissance for web resources and tools
by containing collaboration and social interaction. Web 2.0 includes community
learning and collaborative learning in a social process. J.Schneider, (2006,
p.4) analyzed the historical evolution process of learning technologies
generally by using a schedule below:
The Evolution of Learning Technologies
1960’s- 2010’s
|
Instructor- Led Training
|
1970’s- 2010’s
|
Sound-Video- Multimedia
|
1980’s- 2010’s
|
Computer Aided Learning
|
1990’s- 2010’s
|
Office Applications
|
Assessment Tools
|
|
Interactive Communication Tools
|
|
World Wide Web
|
|
e-learning 1.0
|
|
2000’s-2010’s
|
e-learning 2.0
|
Adopted from Schneider,
2006, p.4
According
to Rosenberg, E-Learning describes as using of internet technologies for
creating and delivering a rich learning environment. This learning environment
includes a broad series of solutions, information resources and instruction.
The goal of e-Learning is enhancing the individual and the organizational
performance (Rosenberg, 2006, p. 72). In Web 1.0, students can access the
content that created by someone else. However, in Web 2.0, students can design
their own Content (Arsun and Kuru, 2006). O’Reilly (2005) formulated Web 2.0 by
some of the examples:
Some Comparative Characteristics of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0
Web 1.0
|
Web 2.0
|
Britannica Online
|
Wikipedia
|
Personal Websites
|
Blogging
|
Content Management Systems
|
Wikis
|
Directories ( Taxonomy)
|
Tagging (Folksonomy )
|
Adopted
from O’Reilly, 2005
Web 1.0 describes as collection of web sites
(read only web sites). Current trends of web technologies and tools are changed
today. E-Learning 2.0 and Web 2.0 (read and write web sites) are the popular
concepts for all organizations Styles (2006) stated the paradigm shift that Web
2.0 initiated in publication history.
According
to Bray Web 2.0 represents a new era of paradigm shift. In this era, there is a
transition from traditional software to internet services (Bray,
2007).Transition from the traditional view of e-learning to the dimension of
technology aiming collaborative nature of learning refers e-Learning 2.0 E-Learning
2.0 contains:
Discussion forums
Blended learning
Virtual
classrooms
Podcasts
Mobile
learning
Games
Blogs,
Wikis etc.
By using social software, students
have three main communication modes:
One-to-one communication includes e-mail and instant messaging
One-to-many communication includes web pages, blogs
Many-to-many communication includes wikis. (Marhan, 2006).
WEB 2.0 APPLICATIONS
The term Web
2.0 does not have an exact meaning; however some people see it as a marketing
buzzword for financial profit. However numerous people have attempted to define
Web 2.0.
Tim O’Reilly after releasing
his first paper describing Web 2.0 ideas attempted to come up with a more compact
definition from his company’s blog(O'Reilly, 2005):
“Web
2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications
are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering
software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use
it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual
users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows
remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of
participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver
rich user experiences.”
Another interesting
definition is from Kingsley who defined Web 2.0 as a point of presence on the
Web for exposing or invoking Web services or Syndicating or Subscribing to
Extensible mark-up language (XML) based content. Richad MacManus defined Web
2.0 as “The Web as Platform” depending on individual perspective; that is for
marketers, the Web is a platform for communications, for journalists the Web is
a platform for new media, for corporate people the Web is a platform for
business, for geeks the Web is a platform for software development, etc.
(O’Reilly, 2005)
Wikis
According
to J.Long, the word Wiki originates from
a Hawaiian term which means “quick” or “Super fast”. As popularly known a wiki
refers to a web site that anybody can edit (J.Long, 2006). The first wiki was
launched by Howard G Cunningham whose wiki site was named as WikiWikiWeb on
March 25, 1996 (J.Long,2006).The most popular wiki site is Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org).
Other examples of wiki sites are and http://pbwiki.com. The main distinctive
feature of any wiki site is that anyone can edit it. The underlying concept of
a wiki is the fact that it acts as a collaborative tool and henceforth facilitates
more effectively the production of a group work (J.Long, 2006).
“A
wiki is essentially a website constructed in such a way as to allow users to
change content on the site”
(Graeme, 2006). A wiki is used to refer to the created document, the site where
it is located and the software to produce it. The key elements of a wiki are:
Ø Hyper textual structure
Ø Social authoring - collaborative production
Ø Process log in “history”
Ø Limited use of html - lack of layers, cascade
styles, JavaScript
Ø Dynamic document - always under construction (Graeme,
2006).
Uses of Wiki
The most uses
of wiki obtained from the survey done by Majchrzak et al., (2006) are as
follows;
Ø
Wikis are
used in e-learning including web design, requirement descriptions, testing, and
assignments to training.
Ø
Wiki is
used in software development processes such as technical documentation, client
approval, issues tracking, internal workflow, quality & process management,
software design, reference information, application maintenance and operations.
Ø
Wiki is
used in project management for creating deliverables, meeting agendas, status
reports, standards and practices.
Ø
Wikis is
used for Community of Practice and user groups, and collaboration.
Ø
Wiki is
also used to provide technology support including best practices, and
Ø
customer
support information-sharing Other wiki uses include tracking interesting
marketing trends, collecting data, logging daily lead counts, information on
partnerships, notifying users of new features, marketing materials, with some
opening up their wikis to selected customers, also it is used in Research and
Development (R&D) for product requirements, product information, &
commercialization in which everything relating to Research and Development is
tracked through the wiki (Majchrzak et al., 2006).
Wikis are used in Education in several ways:
Ø To support collaborative work, substituting
old .doc or .pdf documents.
Ø To produce a course or study corpus in
cooperation with all academic stakeholders: lecturers, students,
Ø
To distribute
information to students, in order to facilitate the updating of materials by
the professor. (Majchrzak et al.,
2006).
Blogs
According
to Doctorow, the term blog originally
come from the phrase “web-log”, which refers to a simple webpage containing
paragraphs of opinion, information, personal diary entries, or links arranged
in a chronological order with the most recent entry first in the style of an online
journal (Doctorow, 2002). The process of blogging is characterised with posting
and commenting blog contents done by blog visitors in which there is an
exchange of views between the blog author and contributors who visit the blog
and comment on blog contents in conversational manner (Anderson, 2007). Blog
entries may include video and other rich media depending on the blogging
software or service that is used (Kennedy et al., 2007).
Examples of
commonly known blog sites are http://radar.oreilly.com/ and http://www.techrinch.com/
which are education-based blogs, http://wordpress.org/ and http://www.blogger.com/start
which are software blogs, and http://technorati.com/ and http://blogsearch.google.com/
which are blog search services (Kennedy et al., 2007).
Whereas
the wiki is a way of constructing knowledge, a blog is a way of distributing
news. Some key elements:
Ø There are one or several authors that produce
entries
Ø Visitors can add comments
Ø New entries and comments do not substitute
older ones
Ø It is possible to subscribe in order to
receive news via email or through RSS readers.
Entries usually include the source of information, thus
validating it. (Kennedy et al., 2007).
Uses of Blogs
According
to Haugen & Claire, in education
recently there are a considerable number of blogs that have been created for
education purposes such as learning and teaching. For instance teachers use
blogs to replace the standard class Web pages. Instructors post class
times and rules, assignment notifications, suggested readings, and exercises.
Aside from the ordering of material by date, students would find nothing
unusual in this use of the blog. The instructor, however, finds that the use of
blogging software makes this previously difficult chore much simpler (Haugen
& Claire, 2006).
In marketing, blogging has
also great advantages in business organisations. For instance blogs can be used
to promote products and services which can reduce advertising and marketing
costs (Haugen & Claire, 2006). In knowledge management blogs can be used
for knowledge works in the sense that blog is useful in articulating ideas, experiences,
opinions through writing which lead to create new knowledge. Specifically for
Education: (klamma et al, 2007)
Ø Teachers have used blogs as an easy way to
produce dynamic learning environments without previous knowledge of html.
Ø Students have used blogs as an alternative
digital portfolio or as a learning log.
Ultimately, blogs
have been used as support for collaborative work.
(Klamma et al, 2007)
Podcasting
Podcasts are audio
recording, usually in the form of talks, interview, and lectures which can be
played either on a desktop computer or on MP3 devices (Anderson, 2007).
Originally podcasts were called audio blogs and were the beginning efforts of adding
audio streams to early blogs (Felix & Stolarz, 2006). Podcast listeners
normally subscribe to RSS feeds so as to receive new information about new
podcasts when they are available. Common example of podcasting sites are:
http://btpodshow.com/, and http://odeo.com. (Felix &
Stolarz, 2006).
Uses of Podcasts
Podcasting is increasingly
applied in education (Brittain et al., 2006). For instance podcasts are
used for recording lectures in the University of Washington (Aldrich et al.,
2006). Within an enterprise environment, a podcast can be used for briefings,
recordings of conference calls, training, new product updates, leadership
messages, and anything that would benefit from verbal and/or video
communication to the employees (Davidson, 2006).
According
to Moore, podcasts and video podcasts in
particular can be helpful when a message needs to be delivered rapidly and
consistently. Video podcasting is a recent added feature to podcasting which
technically can be described as a combination of video files available for
download. Each video files publisher creates a unique Really Simple Syndication
(RSS) file. The main objective of RSS in this case is to describe the video and
presenting the most current video content available. Video podcasts can also be
used when teaching a topic that involves psychomotor skills or many visuals
(Moore, 2006).
RSS
RSS (Really Simple
Syndication) is a technology which has brought about a significant advance in
the fundamental architecture of the web (O'Reilly, 2005). RSS is an XML format
which allows users to know about the content of RSS-enabled websites, blogs, or
podcasts without necessarily visiting its actual site (Anderson, 2007).
While
most professors introduce blogs in traditional curricula, making the most of
their potentialities, students are in general not acquainted very extensively
with these new resources. RSS reader pages with their shared entries page, also
under RSS syndication rules, have not been introduced as a new way to access
information which is based on collective intelligence and collaborative work
(styles, 2006 p. 3-5).
Uses of RSS
According
to Brandom, RSS is an intermediary
tool which supports other Web 2.0 tools like blog and wiki, or any website. For
instance, in educational blogs RSS feed can be used by educators and trainers
from other blogs to alert them about the latest developments in their field of interest
on a regular basis. RSS is a better solution than an email list subscription,
as it does not require users to give out their email addresses, avoiding the
potential for spammers to obtain their email details (Brandom, 2003).
Mashups
According
to bray, Mashup is a term used to
refer to a website or webpage that combines data and services from various
sources on the Web. Mashups can be divided into seven categories: mapping,
search, mobile, messaging, sports, shopping, and movies. More than fourth
percent of mashups are mapping mashups. Housing Maps
(http://www.housingmaps.com) is one of mashup application which pulls sales and
rental information from the classified advertisement Web site Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.
com) and displays the listings on interactive maps pulled from Google (Bray,2007).
Uses of Mashups
Mashups have a potential
uses such as enabling individuals to find a place to live as housing maps
application is used by many people for that purpose, and helping people to
purchase goods locally (John & Urs, 2007).
Tagging and Social Bookmarking
According
to Voss, Tagging is the
association of particular keywords with related content (website, picture or
video), such as photo tagging on photo sharing sites or link tagging on
collaborative news site. A tag is a keyword which describes a website, picture
or video. The basic principle of tagging is that the end users have the power
to create their own indices instead of experts only and the assigned tags are
immediately available on the web (Voss, 2007).
‘Social bookmarking’ is the trend which was first motivated by
the popularity of tagging sites such as del.icio.us (Anderson, 2007). Social
bookmarking systems share similar features that allow users to create lists of
‘bookmarks’ or ‘favourites’ that are stored on a remote central server (Millen et
al., 2006). While most students and professors make use of the potential of
Google when searching for information, they hardly make the most of shared
bookmarks as a new information access method based on collaborative selective
searching (Anderson, 2007).
According
to Anderson, Folksonomy is a term related to tagging concept which refers to
the collection of tags created by an individual for personal use. And it is
described as a result of tagging practice (Anderson, 2007). Social tagging was
seen as a useful way to get a reliable content classification out of a large
number of people. (Avram, 2006).
Uses of Tagging
Tagging has become
recently a popular approach for sharing information and collaboration. Common
examples of applications that apply tags are photos sharing, web pages, and
email applications (Muller et al., 2006). Collaborative tagging is used
in the enterprise for connecting expertise within the enterprise and can
enhance communication through social networks of tags or topics
(Muller et al., 2006).
WEB 2.0
IN EDUCATION
According
to John and Seligmamm, Web 2.0 tends to
complement, enhance, and add new collaborative dimensions to the classroom.
Therefore the main focus of this section will be on how these tools are used in
teaching and learning in higher education. As this dissertation is essentially
based on examining the usefulness of the tools to enhance the knowledge sharing
process then understanding their ubiquity in higher education pave new ways to
think about how there could be potential for knowledge sharing among academics
in higher education and hence improving knowledge creation as well as
innovation in the academic universe of discourse (John and Seligmamm, 2006).
Wikis
According
to Parker and chao, Wikis are largely
used in education for both teaching and learning. Wikis can be used in the
classroom to support many learning approaches. Learning approaches that could most
be supported by wikis are collaborative learning and the constructivist
learning paradigms. Collaborative learning is a learning process in which
students work together in different mixed groups to support the learning of
their individual members. The collaborative features of wikis may be used to
support a collaborative learning environment. Wikis can be used to facilitate
the computer - supported collaborative learning process to enhance education and
research (Parker and chao, 2007)
According to Flanagan and Calandra, Wikis and other online collaboration
tools can be used in the classroom for a variety of uses, but Wikis, in
particular, may not be as directly applicable to classroom objectives as Blogs
are, due to the nature of allowing anyone to make edits. Here are some ways to
engage students to collaborate online.
Class Notes. Let students
contribute their notes to a central repository that is available for all to
refer to, whether at home or at school.
Exploration. Discover new topics
together. By enabling anyone to contribute links and text, course materials can
be built as you go.
Teamwork. Build a class project
collaboratively, requiring the entire class to contribute to the building of
the final presentation.
Documentation. Maintain a journal
of work performed on group projects.
Integrity. Instil trust in the
group by knowing that the entire project may be deleted by any editor at any
time.
Inclusive. Create a sense of
accomplishment knowing that everyone can contribute (Flanagan and Calandra, 2007).
Blogs
According to Duffy and
Bruns, blogs have a large range of potential use in higher education and
research suggests that their growing popularity might help students to
accomplish some of their learning activities more effectively. The structure of
a blog facilitates the students’ ability to demonstrate critical thinking, and
make sophisticated use of language and design elements. The potential
educational uses of blogs first in a personal academic perspective where a blog
can support reflection on teaching experiences, classified descriptions of
resources and methodologies, ramblings regarding professional challenges and
teaching tips for other academics, and illustration of particular technology
issues to other colleagues.
Blog also can
support a common online presence for unit-related information such as calendars,
events, assignments, and resources. Similarly they can support an online area
for students to post contact details and queries relating to assignments. Within
a pedagogical perspective a blog can support comments based on literature readings
and student responses as well as to provide a collaborative space for students to
act as reviewers for course-related materials.
Schools
can utilize blogs in a number of ways, from informing students on upcoming
events, to discussing topics of interest to all students or particular classes.
Teachers can use Blogs to post homework assignments, course materials and
additional resources. Language teachers are utilizing Student Blogs to track
and publish creative writing assignments, short stories and poetry. Because
Blog posts are automatically stamped with the time and date, you’ll know who
waited until the last minute to do a week’s worth of assignments. Turn your
students into reporters and have them document daily events at school, sporting
contests, and other activities (Duffy&
Bruns, 2006).
Podcasting
According to Ractham &
Zhang, Podcasting is becoming a new learning paradigm in the academic
environment in which material such as a course lectures can be recorded into
audio and video files and delivered to subscribing users automatically. In
University of Sydney podcasting was used to support postgraduate students in
the Faculty of Economics and Business. Podcasting has been used in Duke
University primarily for disseminating recorded lectures and discussions. Video
podcast can also be used when teaching a topic that involves psychomotor skills
or many visuals (Ractham & Zhang, 2006).
RSS
Duffy & Bruns (2006)
suggest a significant number of different ways in which RSS feeds can be useful
in an educational context that was specified by Harrsch (2003). For instance
students and lecturers may get an updates from wikis, blogs and research sites that
are relevant to their course topics.
Also Duffy & Bruns
(2006) state that RSS feed allows teachers to obtain any updates of new content
added to students’ blogs without visiting their sites, also students can subscribe
to the feeds of their friends, peers and teachers. Furthermore lecturers and students
can set up RSS feeds for assignment topics and areas of research interests.
Mashups
Most of the research that
is reported appears to suggest that mashups are not being widely used in
education. And there are little findings regarding application of mashups in
education although they seem to have potential uses like other Web 2.0 tools.
For instance it has been indicated that in cartographic higher education
mashups are built to help the mapmaking process. Moreover there are also
suggestions that mashups applications like Google Earth might have potential
uses in education. For example they can provide educators with a means to
assess and reinforce the students’ visual literacy. Also it can help them develop
a context for spatial and cultural differences around the world. (Flanagan and
Calandra, 2007).
WEB 1.0 VS WEB 2.0
Adopted from
http// Google search/ www.google.com/
NEED FOR THE STUDY
The World Wide Web and Internet
technology in general, is constantly evolving. Growing from early roots as a
relatively static network of hyperlinked documents, Web 2.0 refers to a
perceived second-generation of Web-based technologies including online
communities, wikis, forums, blogs and chat rooms technology which combines to
form the basis for online social networking. Although the name, “Web 2.0”
suggests that there is a newer version of the Internet, in truth, there is no
specific Web 2.0 program or software. No upgrades are required, and you won’t
find system specifications for it. Web 2.0 is merely a commonly used marketing
label for the rich interactivity that many online destinations now offer to
their members. Most of the technologies people think of when describing Web
2.0, such as live, real-time databases, content editors that allow
instantaneous worldwide publishing and interactive communities with blogs,
forums and chat room have been available since the earliest days of the Web.
Web 2.0 technology is very useful for
present and future generation’s teachers and students. So the investigator can select the topic “WEB 2.0- AN EFFECTIVE PLATFORM FOR
LEARNING ENGLISH LANGUAGE: A SURVEY ON POST GRADUATE STUDENTS’’
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The title for the study is “WEB 2.0-
AN EFFECTIVE PLATFORM FOR LEARNING ENGLISH LANGUAGE: A SURVEY ON POST GRADUATE STUDENTS”
OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS
The investigator wants to give explanations
for the terms used in the title of the study.
Web 2.0 Technologies:
This term states a renaissance for web
resources and tools by containing collaboration and social interaction. Web 2.0
includes community learning and collaborative learning in a social
process. There has been shift from a World Wide Web that is “read only
(web 1.0)” to a Web that is being described as the “Read Write Web (web 2.0).”
Survey:
Research or investigation of an Educational problem making use
of scientific methods of sampling and carefully planned methods of questioning.
A survey is a famous method of scientific investigation in which large samples
of people answer questions. Research methods that involves asking questions
about opinion, beliefs or behaviour.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
GENERAL OBJECTIVES
To find out the year of experiences in
computer usage among the PG students
To find out the
year of experiences in internet usage among PG students
To find out the frequency of the PG students
experience with internet.
To find out the
purpose for which the PG students use the internet.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
1.
To find
out whether there is any significant difference in the mean scores of learning
English language through web 2.0 applications among the postgraduate students
with respect to their year of studying.
2.
To find
out whether there is any significant difference in the mean scores of learning
English language through web 2.0 applications among the postgraduate students
with respect to their course of study.
3.
To find
out whether there is any significant difference in the mean scores of learning
English language through web 2.0 applications among the postgraduate students
with respect to their residence of the students.
4.
To find
out whether there is any significant difference in the mean scores of learning
English language through web 2.0 applications among the postgraduate students
with respect to their locality of the institution.
5.
To find
out whether there is any significant difference in the mean scores of learning
English language through web 2.0 applications among the postgraduate students
with respect to their types of management.
6.
To find
out whether there is any significant difference in the mean scores of learning
English language through web 2.0 applications among the postgraduate students
with respect to their father’s Educational qualification.
HYPOTHESES OF THE STUDY
The hypotheses of the present study a
formulated as follows:
1.
There is
no significant difference in the mean scores of learning English language
through web 2.0 applications among the postgraduate students with respect to
their course of study.
2.
There is
no significant difference in the mean scores learning English language through web
2.0 applications among the postgraduate students with respect to their year of
studying.
3.
There is
no significant difference in the mean scores of learning English language
through web 2.0 applications among the postgraduate students with respect to
their type of management.
4.
There is
no significant difference in the mean scores of learning English language
through web 2.0 applications among the postgraduate students with respect to
their residence of the students.
5.
There is
no significant difference in the mean scores of learning English language
through web 2.0 applications among the postgraduate students with respect to
their locality of the institution.
6.
There is no significant
association between Fathers’ Education and their children’s learning English language through web 2.0
applications.
LIMITATION
OF THE STUDY:
Even though every attempt has been made to make the study more
precise & objective as possible, the investigator in the present study
noted a few limitations. The following are the important limitation.
1.
The
present study was restricted to P.G arts & science College students of Tirunelveli
District
2.
The study
was conducted among the P.G arts & science College students and not
extended to other students studying in engineering college because of various
constraints.
3.
Even
though, collecting data being a complex phenomenon, involving a variety of
variables, so the study had been limited to a few selected variables such as
nature of the College, type of the management and Educational qualification.
ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION
The study is
reported in five chapters.
Ø The first chapter introduces the research study besides
providing a theoretical framework of the study.
Ø The second chapter presents a review of conceptual and research
studies which have been completed in India and abroad in the area taken for the
study
Ø The third chapter deals with procedures of research adopter for
present investigation
Ø The fourth chapter presents the analysis and interpretations of
data.
Ø The fifth chapter summaries the findings of the study and
suggestions and recommendations that emerge from the finding are also
discussed.
CONCLUSION
Theoretical framework of the study is given in the first
chapter. The next chapter deals with the Review of related literature.
REFERENCES
BOOKS
Ramesh Bangia (2001) “Fundamentals of
programming languages’ cybe tech publications, New Delhi.
Rohit
Anand (2005) Internet Education, International Scientific Publishing
Academy, New Delhi.
Sharma, B.M. (2004) Net oriented
education, Akansha Publishing House, New Delhi.
Thiyagu.K (2007) Information and Communication Technology, Prophet
Publishers, Trichy.
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