- Social software or social networking: “using networked computing to connect people to boost their knowledge and ability to learn” (152)
- Microcontent: “Microcontent is simply small content–small in terms of size and contributor effort… Creating web content in either format does not require that the contributor build page layout, design menus, or develop a look and feel” (152).
- Social filtering: “Drawing on the wisdom of crowds, users contribute content to the work of others, leading to multiple-authored works, whose authorship grows over time. Creators comment on others’ creations, allowing readers to triangulate between primary and secondary sources. This practice of social filtering has lead to the advent of folksonomies” (153).
Alexander also discusses the importance of tagging in Web 2.0:
Folksonomies are powerful because users actually use them by willingly adding simple tags to documents. Folksonomies
also succeed because of their social nature. As contributors tag, they have access to tags from other readers, which often influence their own choice of tags (154). Examining the tags attached to movie files, digital photographs, and podcasts
reveals potentially useful information about the way that others perceive these objects, questioning audience, literacy,
and reception…Tagging may become a part of more general media literacy in the very near future, giving urgency to further research. (154-6)
He brings Web 2.0 into the classroom by articulating how Web 2.0 tools and texts can be used in the classroom:
- “Web 1.0, as it were, allowed students to read and create static hypertext documents. The open nature of Web 2.0 platforms, connected by hyperlinking, lets learners pursue connections across multiple lines of thought” (156).
- “Multiple browsers or tabs within a browser lets learners pursue multiple inquiries in rapid and almost sequential sequence” (156).
- “Students partaking of this rich international conversation find themselves catapulted beyond the physical boundaries of the classroom or library. Moreover, writing for a global audience is a powerful stimulus for questioning personal identity, representing oneself through writing, and understanding an audience” (156)
- Web 2.0 is “complex and requires higher order critical thinking skills. In the process of searching for material through a search engine like Google, the student is faced with choices about how to sift through documents, assess the quality and credibility of information, and make decisions about intellectual property” (157).
- Working with Web 2.0 “requires identifying and modeling on the behavior of others, testing out options, and learning from peers–in short, developing a literacy practice” (158).
He discusses CMS’s, detailing the differences between CMS’s and the Web. However, he does not claim that CMS as a close system is a bad thing. In fact, he maintains that,
students are developing dual digital literacies in the modern networked environment. Consider the radically different
experience of fulfilling an assignment in a CMS, as opposed to solving a problem using the open Web…Last, this double
literacy of CMS and Web 2.0 will accompany learners throughout their lifelong learning. There are many walled gardens
in the digital world, such as banking programs, proprietary databases, and institutional intranets. The ability to shift
modes from open to closed networks is a multimodal literacy already flourishing in schools and homes. (157-8)
Finally, he asserts that “teachers must learn how to assess the value of information presented in a game and teach students to think critically about these social simulations” (159).
Key Terms
- Web 2.0: “a way of creating Web pages focusing on microcontent and social connections between people. It also exemplifies that digital content can be copied, moved, altered, remixed, and linked, based on the needs, interests, and abilities of users—quite against the grain of both traditional and recently expanded copyright” (150)
- Folksonomies: “single words that users choose and apply to microcontent. In contrast, traditional metadata is usually hierarchical (topics nested within topics), structured (traditional library sanctioned metadata standards such as Dublin Core), and predetermined by content authorities (bibliographers, catalogers)” (153-4).