LITERATURE REVIEW
2.5 WEB LEARNING TOOLS .1 The Internet
2.5.3 Reflection of the researcher on the above issues of WBTL
2.5.3.3 Designing a web site for teaching and learning (software development)
Designing a web site is the most difficult ring of the three rings for the facilitators because it needs advanced knowledge and skills used in designing a web site and learning theories. This ring uses the other two rings because they are also a product of this ring. In order to use it one needs to understand the use of all the tools mentioned in the above two rings as well as Email, Email list software (i.e. "listservs"), Threaded discussion tools, Linear discussion tools, Instant Messaging (IM) tools, Chat tools (IRC, java, html, voice), Web page publishing, FTP, Groupware tools, Advanced programming language authorising software (it is designed to let facilitators design their modules), research knowledge / skills and teaching / learning theories / methods.
The above knowledge and skills are required in order to use the Web for learning in the production of the virtual reality that enables the use of multimedia in teaching and learning. Virtual Reality is the creation of an artificial environment that the Internet users can experience (Huber, 1990). It includes something like virtual classrooms, virtual libraries and virtual institutions.
Multimedia is the integration of text, graphics, video, animation and sound presented on the Internet Web page or site (Levine, 2004). Multimedia environment works hand in hand with Telnet to promote a good environment for web learning, which includes good teaching and learning resources like games and others. “Telnet refers to an Internet protocol that enables users to log on to a remote computer on the Internet as if they had a direct local connection”
(Shelly et al, p.7.3). It also involves playing games, the use of Usenet and IRC on the Internet. Usenet refers to a collection of newsgroups (discussion groups and news), which are accessed via the Internet. IRC is an Internet programme that allows users to join other users in real-time conversations on the Internet.
The knowledge and skills required for this ring (of the three rings) are also useful in the utilisation of an Avatar, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 with Semantic Web in teaching and learning. The term "avatar" comes from Hindu mythology, and
originally was the name of the temporary body that God uses when visiting Earth. In virtual communities, an avatar is a graphical representation of a participant. Avatars may also be called "characters", "players", "residents", or
"citizens" (Copeland, 2003). In Web-Based Teaching and Learning (WBTL) or Web learning avatar is one of the powerful elements that cannot be easily ignored by Web users.
Web 2.0 is perceived as a method of remixing older technology with new technology in order to change the whole attitude of using the Internet (Anderson, n.d). It is done through the use of four basic applications that are capable of combining different technologies with an aim of promoting collaboration and communication. According to Anderson, (n.d) these applications are: social networking, blogging or blogs, wikis and tagging.
Social networking helps people find and communicate with other people or organisations of similar interest. The three most popular social networking are:
Facebook, MySpace.com and 43Things.
Blogs were limited to text and later they started to accommodate or expand into sound and video technologies as valuable tools for proposals of new ideas, announcements, designing a simple website, commentary and editorials. Blog has been involving Really Simple Syndication (RSS) technology which has been making possible for users to subscribe to a blog and receive updates automatically whenever those blogs are updated (Amory, 2006).
Wiki is a website that can be edited by anyone who visits it. Most websites ended up including the wiki for peer review purposes. Allen (2008) believes that the most popular wiki at the moment is Wikipedia and its affiliates.
Tagging is a method of using internet content by tagging it with descriptors of that content for easy access to other users as well as when they search for information. A combination of different tags such ‘university’, ‘technology’ and
‘education’ for example may produce a long list of concepts such as ‘university
of technology’, ‘technology education’, ‘educational technology’, and more.
Tagging is also known as folksonomy (Zimmer, 2008).
It is important to notice that all these four applications that make the Web 2.0 are not new because they can be traced back to as early as 1990’s (first blog), 1995 (first Wiki) and 2004 (term Web 2.0) (Zimmer, 2008). According to the inventor of Web 1.0 (World Wide Web) Tim Berners-Lee the term (Web 2.0) cannot be used in any meaningful way, as long as it still use many technologies that have been used by Web 1.0 or WWW (Allen, 2008). Other powerful websites such have managed to promote the concept of the Web 2.0 by combining these four applications.
On the other hand Web 3.0 is also pushing its way in by trying to replace the Web 2.0. Web 3.0 is predicting the future of the Web after the Web 2.0. It describes the evolutionary stage and introduced to hypothesise about the future of the Web (Markoff, 2006). Semantic Web is a good example of the Web 3.0.
The Semantic Web is a mesh of information linked up in such a way as to be easily processable by machines, on a global scale. It is just an efficient way of representing data on the World Wide Web (WWW). The Semantic Web is Tim Berners-Lee’s (Inventor of the WWW) idea. There is a team that was tasked to this project in order to improve, extend the system and accommodate many languages, publications and tools that have been already developed. But, “the Semantic Web technology is still very much in its infancy, although the future of the project in general appears to be bright,” (Brickley, 2004).
This means any information that is hidden away in Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) will be disclosed once the project is finished. This suggests that the Semantic Web can be seen as an extension of the current web, which is being reshaped to accommodate reusing and sharing of data across applications. This further suggests that it will cover these areas, because Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila (2001) define the Semantic Web as the extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined
meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. Other important issues of the Semantic Web are Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), Resource Description Framework (RDF), Notation 3 (N3) and Screen Scraping and forms.