The Use of Web 2.0 Technologies in E-Learning: Implications and Opportunities

Abstract

Advocates of the transformative potential of Web 2.0, however, have taken up the challenge with much the same sense of conviction that led previous generations to champion the cause of talking movies, radio, television, and microcomputers: “Each of these highly touted electronic marvels went through a cycle of high expectations for reforming schools, rich promotional rhetoric, and new policies that encouraged broad availability of the machines, yet resulted in limited classroom use” (Cuban, 2001, p. 137). As Cuban reminds us then, previous rounds of excitement about new e-learning technologies have shown that words of caution must always temper the often extravagant claims made about them, lest they remain readily available but underused. While for a number of commentators on technology and society, Web 2.0 is a term still very much under erasure, this paper will examine the potential of Web 2.0 technologies to enhance collaboration, participation and community building in an e-learning context. While it is still too early to provide definitive answers to the future of Web 2.0, it is already clear that for them to have any significant impact, they must be properly contextualized and developed in relation to curricula. References Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. & London. Warschauer, M., & Grimes, D. (2007). Audience, authorship, and artifact: the emergent semiotics of Web 2.0. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 27, 1-23.