My favorite Web 2.0 tools were blog and
Wiki. Well, I also want to point that Jing and Google Suite have lot potential
on education. Jing can be used to easily teach a technique to leaners. Google
Suite includes a lot of tools such as Google Drive, Google Maps, or Google
Docs, etc. They provide a platform that allows everyone can share information,
files, ideas, etc. But I think blog and Wiki
are the tools that will be frequently used in instruction.
Blog. Well, we use this tool in this whole
semester. We post our reflection and application reviews on our blog. As the
author mentioned about, “Web 2.0 tools potentially opens learning beyond the
closed doors of the classroom or walled gardens of registered student,
login-only, course sites” (p.300). By using Blogger, we can read other
classmates’ idea towards every week’s reading. We also share experience from
different background. This really helps me to expand my vision a lot. Since I
have a totally different background of education, I had no idea about United
States education before. But right now, after a semester’s reading about others
blog, I get some information about it. In contrast, if I take all of courses in
classroom or an access restricted learning management system, I might haven’t
the opportunity to communicate with other classmate about extra knowledge and
information since the class’s time is limited and we need focus on what professor
is introducing to us.
Wiki is a knowledge and information
repository that “allow users to add value to team work through their comments,
additions, edits, or deletions of erroneous content” (p.300). We used to use “Wiki”
as a verb. Like, if you don’t know anything, ok, go to wiki it! “As important
as their contribution to networked artifacts is the skills and attitudes
learners acquire by creating and offering content to the open world.” To some
extent, Wiki helps people break the knowledge boundary of subject. In the past,
if we wanted to know some other subject’s knowledge, we had to go to library
and spend a lot of time to search the information we needed. But right now, we
just need to enter the keywords and then we can find the information we needed
from Wiki, no matter what subject or field. This help people gain knowledge
more quickly. Although there are some defects since Wiki allows everyone edit
the information, I still think Wiki is a good tool to acquire information. Because
I think that the knowledge we presently possess is not changeless, absolute
truth. Like a word I once read from a book, “There is no only alternative;
there is no absolute truth.” I think that’s why we keep discover this world.
