Article Review

Saiful Hairin B. Rahmat

2013730423

Article review no. 1:

To use or not to use web 2.0 in higher education?
Gabriela Grosseck
The emergence of Web 2.0 in Education has been an obvious approach by many
educators. The current educators are the breed of Web 1.0 and may feel that the incorporation
of Web 2.0 and its functionality will bring a lot of benefit to the learners.

In this article, the author is focusing on several key issues. First and foremost is, what is
Web 2.0? According to the article, Web 2.0 has been understood to mean the social use of the
Web which allow people to collaborate, to get actively involved in creating content, to generate
knowledge and to share information online. Beneath all the hype, Web 2.0 platforms are seen to
have an emerging role to transform teaching and learning (Alexander & Levine, 2008). The
author describes the important description and descriptors for the use of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 has
been emerging since the year 2007 which web users are now able to have a two way
communication on the wide world of web instead of the traditional one way communication with
the Web 1.0.
There are many important aspects of Web 2.0 in the relation to Education. Blogging has
become a worldwide phenomenon. According to (Grosseck, 2009), users of Blogging write for

the purpose of real-world writing experience (Barnard & Meehan, 2005). This authentic
approach can be used for language learning as it gives satisfaction to the writer, rather than
writing for no intended audience. In Blogging, the teacher can response instantly to the writer
and give appropriate response. This response could help the student writer with their level of
confidence and self-esteem in writing. Students also build their own peer network to develop
their own knowledge for writing, and also in the blogging, audience can help the author of the
blog to improve their writing by giving comments and point out mistakes made.
Other recent developments in Web 2.0 has also seen a massive contribution of
knowledge to the web through the use of Wikis or Wikipedia.org. It is basically a collection of
definitions or terms known by contributor to collaborate ideas and to organise data collected
from individuals. This is significant to the development of Web 2.0 being a tool of Education as
knowledge about certain subject keep on growing, with the contribution from knowledgeable
parties. Wikis can also be used as a class portfolio ((Grosseck, 2009) as groups create a group
project for a specific idea, create a classroom documents as a collaborative handout for the
lessons and also for journal writing.
Another massive contribution of Web 2.0 to education is Social Networking. According
(Cobbs, 2008) Social Networking is event support and continuation and social learning
environments. This coincide with the Social Cognitive Theory by Albert Bandura (1982) who
believe that the information-processing theory, that connects the individuals perform a series of
discrete mental operations on incoming information and then mentally store the conclusion that
they have come up from the process. He also emphasizes on the way that children and adults
processes the mental operation and how this would then give effect on their behavior.

Article review no. 2:

Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning
Bryan Alexander

The second chosen article deals with Web 2.0 on a different level. The first article
basically touches on the establishments of Web 2.0 for higher education. In this article by Bryan
Alexander (2006), is going to the depth of the purpose of the creation and the impact of Web.20
in the perspective of education. The author is talking about another feature of Web 2.0 that is
important, which is Social Bookmarking. According to Wikipedia.org, Social Bookmarking is
a social bookmarking service is a centralized online service which enables users to add,
annotate, edit, and share bookmarks of web documents. While a another definition from
Whatis.com is that
Social bookmarking is a user-defined taxonomy system for bookmark s. Such a
taxonomy is sometimes called a folksonomy and the bookmarks are referred to as tags. Unlike
storing bookmarks in a folder on your computer, tagged pages are stored on the Web and can
be accessed from any computer. Technorati, a blogging site, describes the system as "The realtime Web, organized by you." Web sites dedicated to social bookmarking, such as Flickr and
del.icio.us, provide users with a place to store, categorize, annotate and share favorite Web
pages and files. Margaret Rouse, 2006.
From these two definition we can conclude that Social Bookmarking is another tool for
socializing and sharing of interest. This is an appealing feature of Web 2.0 as educator can

adapt this feature into their teaching and for the learning of their students. Educators can
manipulate the pedagogical applications that stem from the affordance of collaborative
information discovery (Alexander B. , 2006). From my own personal point of view, I find this new
advance in technology could be utilized in teaching as the technology is cheap and abundance,
available to the students. Sharing is the new norm among students or teenagers. They like to
share most details with their peers or colleagues. However, there is a certain limitation
educators have to face in bringing this new technology to the classroom. The lack of facility to
cope with such demand would hinder the progress. Nevertheless, if educators and
administrators could together come up with a solution to this hurdle, then the students would
surely benefit from it.
The author of the article also highlighted another feature of Web 2.0 that is beneficial to
the teaching and learning is the social interaction through Wiki. Wiki pages allow users to edit
the content from within the browser window (Alexander B. , 2006), this draws users intelligence
(Karapanos, 2013) which call for other collaborators to share their ideas, correct mistakes or
facts. This is a great opportunity for learning process to take place as social interaction is
happening together with exchanging knowledge. On a smaller scale, users can narrow down
their audience by using JotSpotlive where users can create a specific webpage or by using
Writeboard (http://writeboard.com/) which creator of Whiteboard would invite audience by
emails. This would give freedom and choice for students who are ready to share with a large
audience or a selected audienc only.
The last keynote that the author of this article mentioned was the use of Blog. According
to the author, Blogging has become a signature item of social software (Alexander B. , 2006).
The secret to Blog being popular is that Google search ranks blogs results extensively. This
would make the indentification of blog that suites the searchers need more easily. Thus making
it user-friendly to the students.

Article No. 3
DO STUDENTS WANT WEB 2.0?
AN INVESTIGATION INTO STUDENT
INSTRUCTIONAL PREFERENCES
LASH KEITH VANCE
University of California, Riverside

In this last article review, I have stumbled upon an interesting article by Lash Keith Vanc,
from University of California. It is on the other side of the argument that I have brought into view
which was proposing the idea of Web 2.0. It also important to see other opinion on this subject
matter and it is an increasingly important issue pertaining the future of education.

One of the most significant ideas of web 2.0 is the idea of sharing and contributing.
According to (Vance, 2012) he brought of a question whether students want web 2.0 for doing
their work or for pleasure? The initial target user is the age of 18-33, but the majority of learners
or language learners starts at the age of 7-17. Recent developments in Web 2.0 have
heightened the need for a closer analysis of the effect Web 2.0 has and will give so effect to the
learners. Also, one has to see the pedagogical uses of technology in the classroom settings or
student perception of technology (Vance, 2012). Having to check a twitter message is quite
different from using it for instructional purpose. Research data also reveals the kind of
information about how these learners behave online, but is it the same case with the learners
using Web 2.0 for their learning process?

The type of activities the learners indulge in Web 2.0 differs with different purpose.
Blogging as cited in (Thompson, 2006) was started in 1994, since then millions now have and
read blogs on daily basis. It is considered as a Self-expression, self-reflection, social
interaction, and reflective dialogue (Deng & Yuen, 2011). Another activity on Web 2.0 is
Podcasting which is define as in (Panday, 2009) an optimum way of using music devices,
especially mp3 players, for the purpose of education. Even though there are some uses of
podcasting in lessons, students are not sure of the advantages of using podcasting in their
learning (Lonnn & Teasely, 2009). Also in this article, Vance found that in Social Networking
there is also there is a widespread of anticipation of possible uses for social networking sites as
instructional and research tools (Dickinson, 2010). With the growing need to adapt Social
Networking in the classroom, the learners have become ignorant of the pressure it gave to the
educator to introduce the technology.
The result for the study shows that learners prefer the inclusion of web 2.0 into their
classroom. This maybe as a result of the connectedness of the millennial generation ( (Vance,
2012). Nevertheless, being connected does not mean they are a willing-user in utilizing Web 2.0
in all aspect of learning (Vance, 2012). One of the interesting results from the study shows that
75% of the respondents thought that Facebook should be one element of the course.

References
Alexander, B. (2006). Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning.
Educause, 34-44.
Alexander, B., & Levine, A. (2008, Nov./Dec.). Web 2.0 Storytelling. Emergence of a
New Genre. In EduCAUSE Review. Vol. 43 / no. 6. 2008. 40-56. Retrieved from
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0865.pdf
Barnard, R., & Meehan, A. (2005). Writing for the real world: Student book 2. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Cobbs, J. (2008, feb 1). Learning 2.0 for Associations. . Retrieved from
http://blog.missiontolearn.com/files/Learning_20_for_Associations_eBook_v1.p
df
Deng, L., & Yuen, A. (2011). Towards a framework for educational affordancesof
blogs. Computers & Education,, 56(2), 441-451.
Dickinson, G. K. (2010). How do you use social networking tools? Library Media
Connection, 28(5, 45-44.
Karapanos, E. (2013). Modeling users' experiences with interactive systems. Berlin::
Springer.
Lonnn, S., & Teasely, S. D. (2009). Podcasting in higher education: What are the
implications for teaching and learning? Internet & Higher Education, 12(2),,
88-92.
Panday, P. P. (2009). Simplifying podcasting. International Journal of Teaching and
Learning in Higher Education 20(2), 251-261.
Rouse , M. (2006). social bookmarking.
Thompson, C. (2006). The early years. New York Magazine, 4/11/2011).
Vance, L. k. (2012). Do student want web 2.0? An investigation into instructional
referrences. J. EDUCATIONAL COMPUTING RESEARCH, Vol. 47(4), 481-493.