Nataliia Fominykh, PhD, pedagogical sciences
Sevastopol
Institute of Banking of Ukrainian Academy of Banking
of the National Bank of Ukraine
Ideas of Web-2.0 for Language Education
'I have always imagined the
information space as something to which everyone has
immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse, but to create.'
Tim Berners-Lee (the founder
of WWW)
The
Internet gives great opportunities for teaching and studying English. The
Internet for teachers and students can be: a monitor which controls the work
during the classes; a source of information that can be found in it; a helper
and organizer of real communication with native speakers; a tool with the help
of which a teacher can create his own projects, didactic materials and even
interactive computer programs.
Nowadays,
using the Internet, we should distinguish Web–1.0 and Web–2.0 technologies. If
the main factor of Web–1.0 is technology itself, then the main factor of
Web–2.0 is a human-being. And unlike Web–1.0 technologies that are oriented on getting
information from the net as a source of it, Web–2.0 is a platform for social
collaboration. It helps to transfer the accent from the software onto
communication, partnership and cooperation. This very transfer is the main goal
of education.
In the
first generation of the Internet there was a clear-sharp border between readers
of the net and its creators – engineers because filling the net required rather
specific technical skills and knowledge, while the Internet of the second
generation is not just a place for communicating and collaborating, but it is a
special platform for doing that. Web–2.0 lets users create and edit the
Internet content cooperatively, exchange information and artifacts, store links
and multimedia documents.
The term
“Web–2.0” appeared in 2005 in the article by Tim O’Reilly “What Is Web–2.0”,
but the author insists that this term is not clearly defined yet. Nevertheless
we can try to determine the principle technical, didactic and social
characteristics of the second generation of the Internet. First of all, Web–2.0
is intended for using just programs-browsers without installing special
software to be able to work with its sources and content. Secondly, “harnessing
collective intelligence” [2] enhances developing and filling the technologies
with the information. Thirdly, presence of so called social nets enables users
to collaborate and exchange information rapidly.
So,
Web–2.0 moves the borders of users↔author, local↔removed, private↔public. As
for the border users↔author: While in the Web of the first generation
users could just consume information that had been published by the author of
the web-site, then due to Web–2.0 everybody on the net can become a coauthor that
means we can change, correct, comment, evaluate educational products, consult
with the professionals, ask questions and get answers. Hereby, the content that
is being created by the net-users is becoming the greatest channel of social
communicating and collaborating.
The
examples of this attribute can be such teachers’ tools as Quia, ESL-video,
Mindomo, Blogs, Wiki, Quests, the most famous Web–2.0 service YouTube and a lot
of others. On these sites you can publish your own electronic projects for the
teachers around the world. So, you become famous in one minute because
everybody can use you publications and give you permission to use his works as
well.
As for
the border local↔removed just imagine such a situation. You are invited
to a conference and suddenly you are struck by the idea to demonstrate your
projects. How to do it if they are saved on your local home computer? The
technologies of the second generation of the Internet allow saving personal
information in special places called web data or media storages and reaching
your data anywhere in the world at any moment. In addition it is very save
because in order to get access to your data you don’t have to use any flash
cards, disks or other information carriers which are not very reliable. The
examples of such services are: information sharing sites, media storages, and even
your e-mail box.
Removing
the border private↔public is the main feature of Web–2.0. It’s up to you
to decide to make everything you publish private or public. And every Web–2.0 service
can be the example of it, especially, social networks. If you make you
materials public other people can find them with help of the tags. This
technology is called folksonomy – it lets people give tags to their
web-products and find different materials using the tags. It is so called folk
classifying of sites.
Generalizing
the works by Paul Anderson, O’Reilly and our own experience in this field, will
try to accentuate the basic social features of Web–2.0. Among them:
– openness
and simplicity;
– presence
of a great anonymous discrete audience that encourages self-expressing and
self-revealing;
– users’
partaking in sources’ developing and their self-controlling of the process;
– technical
mediation of communicating on the net;
– a radical
decentralization, that means all the users have the same rights and
responsibilities;
–
having no border, every user can expand Web–2.0 services and its content
endlessly;
– collaborating
and communicating in different social groups;
–
individual production and user generated content;
–
harness the power of the crowd;
–
radical trust for every user;
– moving
from individual intellect to the collective one.
The
synonyms to Web–2.0 are: collaboration, information sharing, recommendation,
participation, cooperation, usability, mobility, accessibility and even economy
(you don’t have to buy any disks of flash-cards and you don’t have to print
your Handouts any more).
As for
educational and didactic peculiarities of the second generation of the net,
they flow from the technical and social ones. These characteristics enable a
teacher to create his own Learning Environment, use element of Distance
Education, actualize individual students’ work, motivate students greatly and
raise teacher’s own professional activity to a new level – level Web–2.0.
Teachers
around the world consider Web–2.0 to be a great platform for project work
because of using the wisdom of the crowd as the psychologists say that a group
of people collaboratively can found a much wiser decision to a problem than the
wisest member of this group working individually.
With
the emergence of the notion Web–2.0 there appears a term education–2. Some
scientists consider it to be just a successful metaphor, but a lot of teachers
around the world believe that education–2 is a certain conception. This notion
is defined as a complex of educational systems that are based on the principles
which are adequate to the purposes and objectives of education in the
postindustrial society.
And
finally we can make an attempt to define Web–2.0 as a new generation of the
Internet based on users’ collective work as for creating and exchanging
content, it is a distributed technology built to integrate that collectively
transform collective participation into valuable emergent outcomes. And it’s up
to you to broaden this definition.
And as
the Internet is being created nowadays collectively by all the people around
the world this very net is becoming valuable for every member of the society.
So it will develop the information culture of us, teachers and our students as
well.
The
lists of Web–2.0 characteristics suggested in the report give us just a vague
notion about the second Internet generation, but it’s possible to find
practical recommendations and much more information on the topic on the site for philologists http://shvidko172.narod2.ru/
on its page WEB–2.0 services in teaching English. Here you will find a
catalogue of WEB–2.0 services and some examples how to use them to teach and
study English.
We use
widely the ideas of Web–2.0 in our University. On the page Students’ Corner on
the site you will find materials for students and on this very page there is a
video-class for students where they can study new material, do exercises and
have tests on listening, writing and speaking.
So, nowadays
nobody considers Web–2.0 to be just a commercial trick any more, but a great principally
new platform of the net; a modern social notion; a contemporary way of
perception and using the Internet.
Resources:
1.
Fominykh N. Using ICT in Teaching and Studying English / N. Fominykh //
[Åëåêòðîííèé ðåñóðñ]. – Ðåæèì äîñòóïó: http://shvidko172.narod2.ru/
2. O'Reily
T. Web–2.0 - Ukrainian / Tim O'Reily // [Åëåêòðîííèé ðåñóðñ]. –Ðåæèì äîñòóïó: http://seminar-web-2.narod2.ru/
3. ̳õàëü÷óê Í.
Ñ. ²íòåðíåò ó ðîáîò³ â÷èòåëÿ ðîñ³éñüêî¿ ìîâè ³ ë³òåðàòóðè / Í. Ñ. ̳õàëü÷óê, Í.
Þ. Ôîì³íèõ // Ãîðèçîíòè íàâ÷àííÿ. – 2011. – ¹ 1. – Ñ. 64–68. –
[Åëåêòðîííèé ðåñóðñ]. – Ðåæèì äîñòóïó: http://www.nbuv.gov.ua/portal/Soc_Gum/Go/2011_1/Mihalchuk.pdf
4. Ôèëîëîã.ru. – Ìåòîäè÷åñêàÿ ãàçåòà äëÿ
ó÷èòåëåé-ôèëîëîãîâ. – 2011. – ¹1. – 20 ñ.
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ðåñóðñ]. – Ðåæèì äîñòóïó: http://www.nbuv.gov.ua/portal/Soc_Gum/Go/2011_1/Fominyh.pdf
7. Ôîìèíûõ Í. Þ. Ïðåïîäàâàíèå èíîñòðàííûõ ÿçûêîâ ñ
èñïîëüçîâàíèåì èíôîðìàöèîííî-êîììóíèêàöèîííûõ òåõíîëîãèé / Í. Þ. Ôîìèíûõ //
[Ýëåêòðîííûé ðåñóðñ]. – Ðåæèì äîñòóïà: http://www.pgfa.ru/nauch-konferencii/arhiv-publ/doc_details/321----