The Web Explorer

INTRODUCTION

Educators have been trying to modularize and share learning content since the introduction of online learning. However, they have met several difficulties in both cultural and technological aspect, in order to support learning through the use of reusable, stand-alone, digital assets. Fortunately the advancement of technology especially in web platform (Web 2.0) provides tools for packaging and delivering web-based educational content in easier way. O’Reilly (2005) states six core competencies of the Web 2.0 environment:

· services, not packaged software,

· an architecture of participation,

· cost-effective scalability,

· re-mixable data source and data transformations,

· software above the level of a single device, and

· harnessing collective intelligence.

O’Reilly put special emphasis on the last item, explaining how it seems the central principle behind the success of the giants born in the Web 1.0 era who have survived to lead the Web 2.0 era appears to be that they have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence. The move by some large universities towards digitization and open sharing of content indicates that value is not strictly tied only to content transfer, but rather value comes from a particular learning community that uses content in creative, interactive, and meaningful ways. And this requires more participation, collaboration, and flexibility in creation, adaptation, and use of learning materials. Blogs is one of web 2.0 platform that can be used for educational purposes, for example:

· A group of bloggers using their individual blogs can build up a corpus of interrelated knowledge via posts and comments. This might be a group of learners in a class, encouraged and facilitated by a teacher, or a group of relatively dedicated life-long learners.

· Teachers can use a blog for course announcements, news and feedback to students.

· Blogs can be used with syndication technologies (below) to enable groups of learners and teachers to easily keep track of new posts.

· Blog can be used as a repository platform, to keep and share the learning object material

Read more…

INTRODUCTION

Learning is becoming increasingly easier due to the arrival and the evolution of many new technologies and a numerous of software. Web 2.0 is considered as the second generation of internet usage and Web 1.0 is the first generation. No longer getting one-way communication on the web; now Web 2.0 is about constructing knowledge collaboratively on the web. Web 2.0 is engaging and active compared to the passive and un-engaging Web 1.0 applications which ideal for the virtual learning. This kind of learning are made possible through advancements in technology. Web 2.0 applications (Facebook, MySpace, Blogs, Wiki’s, iGoogle, Flickr, RSS Feeds and YouTube. Etc) are effective teaching and pedagogical tools. These provide a platform for social networking through a medium that allows for sharing, informing, communicating and interacting. Web 2.0 requires active user’s participation in creating content (user generated content). In learning theories, importance of active participation, critical thinking, social presence, collaborative learning and two way communications are also underlined for quality learning (Beldarrin, 2006).

This paper is intended to give an example for how wiki could be implemented to build an online community. Building online learning community is one of the examples of web 2.0 adoption for educational purposes. A constructivist learning process occurs in online community because the characteristics of online community have similarities with the constructivism learning characteristic, for example:

· The member of the community is actively involve

· Online communities usually have democratic environment

· The content is user/member centered and the activity of the member are interactive

· Each member is encouraged to be autonomous and responsible. The community leader only serves as a moderator who manages and filter the flows of information (netiquette , unsolicited content)

Read more…

Learning process that occurs in individual is aiming to get skills, abilities and knowledge. The success indicator of learning process learning can be seen in student’s achievement that qualitatively should be better than the previous state. In order to achieve student’s learning achievement as expected, it is necessary to note several factors that affect learning performances, including: internal and external factors. Internal factors are contained in students, such as: intelligence, talent, interest and motivation. While external factors are factors that come outside of the student, such as experience, family background, school environment and so on.

Read more…