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

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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)

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Cisco Webex: Actually, this is the best web meeting platform that I have tried, the user interface is so easy and very intuitive. It is required no download at all. Features that provided in web meeting are complete and the technology behind that features are stable and mature. The connection speed is stable and reliable. I hardly experience any lag during the web meeting session. The only reasons why I do not like WEBEX is because the company only offers 14 days free trial and its paid services are relatively expensive.  Why bother to use such expensive service if there is another platform that offers the same service and can be used freely or the price is cheaper.

Yugma: the term ‘Yugma’ is from Sanskrit language, meaning “the state of being in unified collaboration”. Yugma offers a free service but with some features are disabled and only a maximum of 10 participants is allowed for a session, each participant has to register before he or she can participate. Software need to be downloaded and installed before being used. The installation process is very easy though may lead a problem to inexperienced user. Another drawback is no video call feature provided in Yugma. The speed and presentation quality are relatively good. Technology that is used by Yugma is from Skype, a well known voip and video conference provider.

Vyew: Vyew is another new comer in the web meeting market. It offers all of the features that Dimdim has offered and also provides a free service but with the limited features. The user interface is good and easy to use. In the free version, scheduling function is disabled. The users are allowed to create only one web meeting session. Voice and video quality are good but only offer one way communication (half duplex). To start voice communication, the users must push the talk button that is somewhat confusing to operate. Desktop sharing is buggy and I have experienced browser crash during the meeting session. I have also experienced slow response and lag when presenting slide show. Overall, Vyew is promising but with those bugs and limited features in free version, I still prefer to use Dimdim for my web meeting platform.