Web 2.0: Salvation or Hype?

1. Web 2.0: Salvation or Hype? A summary of: What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education / Paul Anderson JISC Technology and Standards Watch, Feb 2007 http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf Roger Mills

2. What is Web 2.0? • Web 2.0: does it exist? • Social web – blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasts etc • According to Tim Berners-Lee, this is what the WWW was intended to be all along – the ability for everyone to view and edit any web page

3. Blogs • Term coined 1997 • Blogosphere now incorporates multimedia – photo-blogs, v(ideo) blogs, uploads from mobiles (mob-blogging) • Facilitates syndication and linking – but blog permalinks link pages not content – may not stay same • 13million blogs but 10million inactive

4. Wikis • Have history and rollback functions to restore previous versions – blogs do not • Self-moderation v. malicious editing

5. Tagging • Social bookmarking – stored centrally and shared • Tagged with (multiple) keywords • Also used for photos (Flickr), video (YouTube), Odeo (podcasts [=audio blogs]) • CiteULike – store, organise and share academic papers

6. RSS • Lists updates to websites, blogs or podcasts • Collected and piped to users by syndication • Several versions of RSS • New syndication system developed - 2003: Atom • Open standards

7. Newer Web 2.0 services • Social networking • Aggregation services • Data ‘mash-ups’ • Tracking and filtering content • Collaborating • Replicate office-style software in browser • Source ideas or work from the crowd

8. 6 Key ideas • Individual production and User Generated Content • Harness the power of the crowd • Data on an epic scale • Architecture of Participation • Network effects • Openness

9. 1. User Generated Content • Self-publishing growth similar to that engendered by laser printing and dtp • Cheap, fairly high quality video equipment allows media to use users submissions eg news from ‘citizen journalists’ • Motives monetary at one end, reputation at the other • End of editorial control – eg structure and authority of edited newspaper

10. 2. Harnessing the power of the crowd • Intelligence or information? • Cloudmark – collective spam filtering – works better than machine analysis • Crowdsourcing: intermediary sites which make UGC available for re-use • Threatens market for professionals

11. Folksonomy • A collection of tags for individual use – not collaborative • Allows links between individuals or sites with similar interests • Repetition of tags indicate merging trends of interest

12. 3. Data on an epic scale • Ever-increasing amounts of data leading to ‘datafication’ • Google, Amazon, E-Bay rely on massive amounts of data generated by ordinary browsing to provide targeted services through learning • Who owns this data? Re-purposing, reformatting, re-using - sinister implications?

13. 4. Architecture of participation • System utilises user interactions to improve itself • Service improves the more people use it

14. 5. Network effects • Service increases in value to existing users as others start using it • Can result in lock-in to technology eg MS Office • Or adoption of inferior technology eg VHS over Betamax • Niche areas become significant

15. 6. Openness • Power not in data itself but control of access to that data • Aggregation and republishing obscure rights

16. Pedagogical implications • Techno-centric assumptions obscure motivation • Not all learners find self-production compelling • Students entrenched in peer and mentoring communities may challenge accepted ideas of hierarchy and production/authentication of knowledge • Privacy and plagiarism • Shared authorship and assessment

17. Whither VLEs? • Students prefer Facebook for discussion of lecture materials downloaded from VLEs • Develop Personalised Learnimg Environments – PLEs?

18. Scholarly Research • Use of folksonomies in developing formal ontologies • Cannot replace indexing/KM efforts using controlled vocabularies • Can develop alongside to develop ‘collabularies’ • Private blogging for peer debate • Often anonymous • Collective blogs for peer and public communication

19. Scholarly publishing • First stage publishing may become web-only • Only best and most durable info published conventionally • Data mashing requires open access to data • Open peer review

20. Libraries, repositories and archiving • Library 2.0 services not necessarily product of Web 2.0 technologies • Eg ILL comparable to Amazon delivery • People who borrowed this also borrowed… • Ethos of he long tail: everything has a value beyond how many times it is requested • Tagging=indexing, blog trackbacking=citation analysis, blog-rolling=chaining, RSS= alerting • Web 2.0 can help understanding of user behaviour

21. Archiving • Part of cultural memory • UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) • Many legal problems • Many technical problems • Web is transient • Depends on linked objects, in varying formats all of which must be migrated • Graphical look and feel – do we need it?

22. Preserving Web 2.0 content • Often held in databases, so part of hidden web • Pages created dynamically – little technology to preserve developed yet • APIs proprietary and in perpetual beta • Much data stored on servers owned by American companies • Aggregated data as gathered e.g. by Google of great historical interest

23. Web 2.0 archiving characteristics • Link rot severe in blog archives • Users consider media-sharing services archives already. But if company closes? • Personal catalogues and collections – who is responsible for archiving? • Web 2.0 not conducive to traditional archiving approaches • Can we devise new ones?

24. Looking ahead • Major IPR impact • Information overload • Anxiety if not ‘fully connected’ • Personal catalogues = manifestations of person’s persona • A person’s path through the information space defines their lives • Who owns this information? • New ways of human interaction?

25. Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web • Shift from documents to data on which machines act • Not realised yet • Ontologies (costly) v. folksonomies (free) • Semantic wikis and blogs – annotated by machine • Trust, security and social networks

26. Technology Bubble 2.0? • Unwise to invest too much time, resources and data in new and untested applications • Proceed with caution!

27. And Web 3.0? • High-powered graphics • Visualisation • 3-D social networking • 3-D Internet – merging web and virtual world environments • Or a backlash to Web 2.0: software that erases your digital path

28. Consequences of Web 2.0 for education • Power of the crowd – new communities and groups • Growth in self-generated content challenges exiting hierarchies • Profound intellectual property debates • Watch this space!