Engaging students with mobile web2.0.

Abstract: Blogs, wikis, podcasting, and a host of free, easy to use web2.0 social software provide opportunities for creating social constructivist learning environments focusing upon student-centred learning and end-user content creation and sharing. Building on this foundation, mobile web2.0 has emerged as a viable teaching and learning environment, particularly with the advent of the iPhone (Nicknamed “the Jesus phone” (Goldman, 2007)) and iPod Touch. Today’s wifi enabled smartphones provide a ubiquitous connection to mobile web2.0 social software and the ability to view, create, edit and upload user generated web2.0 content. This paper outlines how mobile web2.0 technologies can be harnessed to enhance and engage students in a social constructivist learning environment. Examples of student and teaching staff feedback are drawn from several mobile learning trials that have been conducted at Unitec New Zealand. Additionally the presentation will involve mobile web2.0 demonstrations and facilitate a discussion around the practicalities of integrating and supporting mobile web2.0 within a tertiary course

A Service based Development Environment on Web 2.0 Platforms

Governments are investing on the IT adoption and promoting the socalled e-economies as a way to improve competitive advantages. One of the main government’s actions is to provide internet access to the most part of the population, people and organisations. Internet provides the required support for connecting organizations, people and geographically distributed developments teams. Software developments are tightly related to the availability of tools and platforms needed for products developments. Internet is becoming the most widely used platform. Software forges such as SourceForge provide an integrated tools environment gathering a set of tools that are suited for each development with a low cost. In this paper we propose an innovating approach based on Web2.0, services and a method engineering approach for software developments. This approach represents one of the possible usages of the internet of the future

Let's get personal

Philip Butler has worked as an e-Learning adviser in post-16 education for 19 years. Here he describes his experiences and outlines what he believes to be the challenges faced by the NH

Studying web 2.0 interactivity: a research framework and two case studies

With more than one third of the world’s population being online, the Internet has increasingly become part of modern living, giving rise to popular literature that often takes a teleological and celebratory perspective, heralding the Internet and Web 2.0 specifically, as an enabler of participation, democracy, and interactivity. However, one should not take these technological affordances of Web 2.0 for granted. This article applies an interaction framework to the analysis of two Web 2.0 websites viewed as spaces where interaction goes beyond the mere consultation and selection of content, i.e., as spaces supporting the (co)creation of content and value. The authors’ approach to interactivity seeks to describe websites in objective, structural terms as spaces of user, document, and website affordances. The framework also makes it possible to talk about the websites in subjective, functional terms, considering them as spaces of perceived inter-action, intra-action and outer-action affordances. Analysis finds that both websites provide numerous user, document, and website affordances that can serve as inter-action or social affordances

Facilitating social constructivist learning environments for product design Students using social software (Web2) and wireless mobile device.

It is well understood and has been well documented that there is much to gain by using social software in creating collaborative learning communities. However little is known about using a context independent interactive collaborative environment with an emphasis upon sharing, ease of use, customization and personal publishing (MobileWeb2). This paper describes an innovative and integrated MobileWeb2 technology in a product design live project setting, that assists product designers to solve a real problem to serve a real client. Students and teaching staff use a smartphone to capture design decisions and prototypes and collate and share these via an online eportfolio. From the data collected from staff/students surveys it was found that this method provided a stimulating collaborative environment that develops personal skill to bring out their latent creativity in such a way that these will become part of their project. Opportunities for mobile web2 product design projects are outlined. The logistics of providing access to appropriate hardware and software for all students are also discussed

Design-Grounded Assessment: A Framework and a Case Study of Web 2.0 Practices in Higher Education

This paper synthesises three theoretical perspectives, including sociocultural theory, distributed cognition, and situated cognition, into a framework to guide the design and assessment of Web 2.0 practices in higher education. In addition, this paper presents a case study of Web 2.0 practices. Thirty-seven online graduate students participated in a small-group collaborative concept mapping activity using Web 2.0 applications (e.g. Webspiration) to construct sophisticated understanding of instructional design processes. The analysis of this case focuses on different assessment strategies adopted to ensure students\u27 successful participation in such technology-rich collaborative context. This case study concludes that a shared goal needs to be in place to establish a purpose of collaboration. The collaborative nature of learning afforded by Web 2.0 applications needs to be acknowledged through the award of grades. That is, both the processes and products of collaborative knowledge construction need to be assessed and formally graded at individual and group levels. This paper also suggests several potential assessment strategies that may enhance smoother Web 2.0 practices, and discusses some possible challenges associated with those strategies