The midden

What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education.

This report written by Paul Anderson, Technical Director of Intelligent Content and Technical Editor of JISC TechWatch, is a detailed review of Web 2.0 technologies and the challenges these pose for Higher and Further Education in the UK.

The origins of the term “Web 2.0″ are explained and put in the context of the so-called Web 1.0 framework. A quote from Tim Berners-Lee clarifies the distinction between the two. As far as he is concerned, Web 2.0 is really what he set out to achieve when he first developed the Web. It is no different to Web 1.0. Rather it is a natural development of the Web 1.0 standards. Web 2.0 is simply the original Web, but in a more advanced and mature form.

He then goes on to explain the main categories of Web 2.0 applications, blogs, wikis, social bookmarking etc. This is a good place to start if you want clarification on any of these applications.

In the third section of this publication, Anderson describes the six “big ideas” behind the Web, as originally put forward by Tim O’Reilly in an article entitled “What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the next generation of software“. In describing these ideas, he tries to piece together the key characteristics of Web 2.0 and how it has developed.

One of the most interesting parts of this publication is the discussion around the Web as a platform - accessing software applications, like wordprocessing and spreadsheet, through your browser rather than as software on your desktop computer. This could have a major impact on education, not least from the point of view of the need to purchase software licenses and pay for upgrades.

Other educational issues around the impact of Web 2.0 on teaching and learning, the need for institutional VLEs, scholarly research, academic publishing, libraries and preservation all make interesting reading, and certainly should be read by university and college managers who have responsibility for ensuring viability of their institutions in a web-enabled world.

One interesting point Anderson raises relates to the assumption that the use of Web 2.0 applications results in an increased openess in how we work. This, however, is not the case as many Web 2.0 -based services do not enable the user to retrieve their data at will. Once it has been put up on the Web, the service provider holds on to it and it is locked within their servers, unavailable to the user. Not until the user can take back their data can it be considered an open system.