It's all about user-generated
Internet content, but is it really a revolution?
Alluding
to the version numbers that often designate software
upgrades, the phrase "Web 2.0" hints at an
improved form of the World Wide Web (Wikipedia).
In a December 2006 issue, Time
Magazine suggested that social software technologies
such as weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts,
RSS feeds, and other forms of many-to-many publishing
imply a significant change in web usage, actually, a
"revolution." According to Tim
O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, where the term was coined,
Web 2.0 is:
a business revolution in the
computer industry caused by the move to the internet
as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules
for success on that new platform. Chief among those
rules is this: Build applications that harness network
effects that get better the more people use them.
Let's try to decode some of the buzzwords by taking
a look at some of the more popular Web 2.0 sites.
an online society with millions
of residents within a 3D world, where users can explore,
build, socialize, and participate in their own economy
using their own currency called Linden Dollars (L$)
a free content, multilingual encyclopedia written collaboratively by contributors around the world - anybody can edit and add to an article
Faculty
Showcase
Jay Anderson
Throughout
his tenure at Franklin and Marshall College, Jay Anderson,
The Richard S. and Ann B. Barshinger Professor in Mathematics
and Computer Science, has utilized many creative
technologies in support of teaching, learning, and research.
In a Foundations course, Forbidden Knowledge,
Professor Anderson utilizes small video clips that have
significant importance to the course material and posts
them online, where his students have around-the-clock
access. He has a worked for over five years on the development
of QuickTime® Movies to illustrate
algorithms from computational geometry. In 2006,
Professor Anderson, an Apple Distinguished Educator,
was recognized in Apple's Profiles
in Success for his work with using desktop videoconferencing
technology to facilitate transatlantic language studies.
More...
2007
Horizon Report
Emerging technologies
likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or
creative expression within higher education
The
2007 Horizon Report "seeks to identify and describe
emerging technologies likely to have a large impact
on teaching, learning, or creative expression within
higher education." Some key trends that the report
calls attention to include:
The environment of higher education
is changing rapidly.
Increasing globalization is changing
the way we work, collaborate, and communicate.
Information literacy increasingly
should not be considered a given.
Academic review and faculty rewards
are increasingly out of sync with new forms of scholarship.
The notions of collective intelligence
and mass amateurization are pushing the boundaries
of scholarship.
Students' views of what is and
what is not technology are increasingly different
from those of faculty.
Time-to-adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
User-Created Content
Social Networking
Time-to-adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
Mobile Phones
Virtual Worlds
Time-to-adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
The New Scholarship and Emerging
Forms of Publication
Massively Multiplayer Educational
Gaming
A snapshot of what's going
on around the World Wide Web
World's
oldest newspaper goes digital
For centuries, readers thumbed through the crackling
pages of Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper.
No longer. The world's oldest paper still in circulation
has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in
cyberspace. The Guardian
A
History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia as a Research
Source
When half a dozen students in Neil Waters's Japanese
history class at Middlebury College asserted on exams
that the Jesuits supported the Shimabara Rebellion in
17th-century Japan, he knew something was wrong. A discussion
about the new policy is planned, with speakers poised
to defend and criticize using the site in research. The New York Times
Social
Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview
This paper reports on the wide use of "social networks"
such as MySpace
or Facebook by
teenagers. Based on survey results, over half of the
respondents said they had a profile and slightly less
than half (48%) said they frequented the sites every
day. The vast majority of them use the sites to "manage
their friendships" or in other words to communicate
with friends. This communication, as the report makes
clear, takes the form of everything from blog entries
and comments to in-network email. Pew Internet &
American Life Project
What technologies will be obsolete
in the next 10 years?
According to a 2006 survey of American teenagers,
gasoline-powered automobiles, compact discs
and desktop computers are headed toward the
technology scrap heap.
The 2006
Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, which gauges
Americans' attitudes toward invention and innovation,
found that a third of teens (33 percent) predict
the demise of gasoline-powered cars by the year
2015. One in four teens (26 percent) expects
compact discs to be obsolete within the next
decade, and roughly another one in five (22
percent) predicts desktop computers will be
a thing of the past.
Teens are also optimistic that new inventions
and innovations will be able to solve important
global issues, such as clean water (91 percent),
world hunger (89 percent), disease eradication
(88 percent), pollution reduction (84 percent)
and energy conservation (82 percent).
"Perhaps more than any preceding generation,
today's young people are completely comfortable
with rapid technological change," Lemelson-MIT
Program Director Merton Flemings said. "The
rate of innovation, as reflected in U.S. patent
applications, has more than doubled during their
lifetime."
[Source: Lemelson-MIT
Invention Index]
Physicists, Evolutionary psychologists, Pulitzer
prize-winning authors. Spiritual leaders. Every
Saturday and Sunday, TVOntario offers its members
the opportunity to hear Big Ideas from influential
speakers from around the world. But even if
you can’t watch the broadcast, you can
hear the lectures by downloading and/or subscribing
to the Big
Ideas podcast.
Podcasting, a portmanteau of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcasting",
is a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users
to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically
by subscription, usually at no cost. It first became popular
in late 2004, used largely for audio files.
Do you have a favorite podcast you'd like to share?
This QuickStart explains how to import clips
from a DVD using iMovie. Once imported and edited,
the video clip can be exported as a digital
video file.
ATS
QuickStarts are designed to provide short, concise instructions
for using hardware, software, and facilities managed by ATS.
Screen Capture of Just One Window - Macintosh
If you want to take a screen capture of just
one window on your Mac, there's a little-known keyboard shortcut
you should get to know. Just press Shift-Command-Spacebar-4
(in that order) and your cursor will change into
a large camera. Click this camera cursor on the
window you want to capture, and it will create
a capture of just that window, which will appear
on your desktop as Picture 1.
Professor Roger Thompson, Psychology,
confers with students regarding their collaborative
research projects for Comparative Cognition &
Behavior. Professor Thompson makes extensive use
of web-based access and collaboration tools.
Throughout
his tenure at Franklin and Marshall College, Jay Anderson,
The Richard S. and Ann B. Barshinger Professor in 
The
2007 Horizon Report "seeks to identify and describe
emerging technologies likely to have a large impact
on teaching, learning, or creative expression within
higher education." Some key trends that the report
calls attention to include:
ATS
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