Social Software, Web 2.0 And Learning: Status And Implications Of An Evolving Paradigm

摘要

The rapid and widespread uptake of social software, or what are popularly referred to as Web 2.0 technologies, has occurred very much from under the radar and therefore taken many, if not most of us, by surprise. As Crook and Harrison (2008) points out, the '2.0 ness' in this definition refers to an assumed step change in the evolution of the Web, which has now become more open, personalized, participative and social. Or it has become more powerful and widely accessible for all and for most of the time. The current family of technologies that this term refers to range from tools emphasizing social networking (e.g. Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn) and media sharing (e.g. MySpace, YouTube and Flickr) to virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life), which constitute this more social and participative web.