YouTube, Podcasting, Blogs, Wikis and RSS are buzz words currently associated with the term Web 2.0 and represent a shifting pedagogical paradigm for the use of a new set of tools within education. The implication here is a possible shift from the basic archetypical vehicles used for (e)learning today (lecture notes, printed material, PowerPoint, websites, animation) towards a ubiquitous user-centric, user-content generated and user- guided experience. It is not sufficient to use online learning and teaching technologies simply for the delivery of content to students. A new “Learning Ecology” is present where these Web 2.0 technologies can be explored for collaborative and (co)creative purposes as well as for the critical assessment, evaluation and personalization of information.

Web 2.0 technologies provide educators with many possibilities for engaging students in desirable practices such as collaborative content creation, peer assessment and motivation of students through innovative use of media. These can be used in the development of authentic learning tasks and enhance the learning experience. However in order for a new learning tool, be it print, multimedia, blog, podcast or video, to be adopted, educators must be able to conceptualize the possibilities for use within a concrete framework. This paper outlines some possible strategies for educators to incorporate the use of some of these Web 2.0 technologies into the student learning experience.

Why should the notion of incorporating Web 2.0 and interacting with for example socially distributed and user-created videos (e.g. from www.youtube.com) be important within education? In what ways has the rapid development of digital technologies associated with the term Web 2.0 and their use in education enabled individuals to interact differently within existing ecologies of learning? How can we as educators engage the YouTube, Google-eyed generation?

Students today have grown up within a world of pervasive technology including mobile phones, digital cameras and the omnipresent internet. Described as, “Gen-X, Millennials, the Nintendo and Net Generation” (Tapscott, 1997; Oblinger, 2003; Olsen, 2005), these students blog, play games in immersive 3-D worlds, listen to podcasts, instant message friends, listen to music, author their own video for www.youtube.com and collaborate on the creation of ‘digital stories’ for their ePortfolio. They absorb information quickly, in images and video as well as text, from multiple sources simultaneously. They operate at what Prensky (2004) describes as, “twitch speed”, expecting instant responses and feedback. They prefer random “on-demand” access to media; expect to be in constant communication with their friends and ease of access in the creation of their own content.

In his article, Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn, John Seely Brown (2002) uses ecology as a metaphor to describe an environment for learning. Brown says, “An ecology is basically an open, complex adaptive system comprising elements that are dynamic and interdependent. One of the things that make an ecology so powerful and adaptable to new contexts is its diversity.” Brown further describes a learning ecology as, “a collection of overlapping communities of interest (virtual), cross-pollinating with each other, constantly evolving, and largely self-organizing.”

New Web 2.0 technologies and websites, such as a blog, wiki or YouTube, make new demands on learning, and they provide new supports to learning, even as they also dismantle some of the learning supports upon which education has depended in the past. If we agree that there are changes occurring across the learning ecology and, that new conceptualisations are required to use these emerging technologies, then some care should be taken to think deeply about the impacts of Web 2.0 on the processes and practices of pedagogy.

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