Tami Brass's List: Web 2.0 Tools and Sites

• It is a well researched fact that boys and girls prefer different learning styles and that that they have a different approach to their education: girls are generally portrayed as conscientious and hard working, while boys are often portrayed as lazy and indulging in an anti-education culture. There is a wide spread recognition that gender does indeed affect the way we all think, behave and learn (Maynard 2002). 

• In short, most boys do not like to talk in the foreign language because:

   
   
  • they are subject to peer pressures and fear of negative feedback from teachers;
   
  • they suffer from lack of self-confidence; and
   
  • they regard speaking as not being real work, preferring instead to engage in activities which they see as having a concrete and practical outcome, such as writing.
   
   

  All of the above socio-affective factors conspire to strengthen boys’ reluctance to speak in their own language, never mind a foreign language in which, not only do they have to say something of consequence on the spot in front of their teacher and fellow students, but in addition they have to pronounce all those strange sounds while ensuring that they get the grammar right.
• It has also been noted by Walker, Davies and Hewer (2008) that ICT motivates by “removing the fear of making errors”.

• Voki is a Web 2.0 tool that enables users to express themselves on the web in their own voice using an avatar, a talking character (Voki 2008) which they can customise to their liking. I decided that Voki would be the ideal tool on which to base the three lessons that I chose to describe and evaluate in this paper because:

   
   
  • it can be accessed both at home and at school;
   
  • it necessitates computer-pupil interaction, which, as described above, is a motivating factor; 
   
  • it facilitates the transition from teacher-centred, class-based learning  to one in which the pupil begins to acquire individual responsibility;
   
  • it makes it possible for the quieter pupils to make their presence felt and be heard; and
   
  • it allows the pupils to role-play and hide behind a mask (an avatar).
   
   

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• Web 3.0 is a term used to describe the future of the World Wide Web. Following the introduction of the phrase "Web 2.0" as a description of the recent evolution of the Web, many technologists, journalists, and industry leaders have used the term "Web 3.0" to hypothesize about a future wave of Internet innovation.
• Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50K average bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average 1 megabit of bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the time, which will be the full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0.

• Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.
• Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. They can build on the interactive facilities of "Web 1.0" to provide "Network as platform" computing, allowing users to run software-applications entirely through a browser.^[3] Users can own the data on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over that data

• Web 1.0 refers to the state of the World Wide Web, and website design style before the Web 2.0 craze, and included most websites in the period between 1994 and 2004. It is important to note that "Web 1.0" is a retronym.
• Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50K average bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average 1 megabit of bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the time, which will be the full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0.