Heather Hersey's List: Tagging

First, Web 2.0 tools are dynamic. Users can constantly update and refresh their own content as well as that of others. This "harnessing of individual and collective intelligence" (Cobo & Pardo, 2007) yields a variety of information in multiple formats with multiple inputs to create content that is iterative, relevant, and current. This is no small feat for countries like Indonesia, which lacks digital educational content in local languages. 

 Next—though this varies among particular applications—Web 2.0 tools possess some degree of interactivity. While "interactivity" is used so frequently vis-à-vis technology as to be almost meaningless, Richard Mayer's (2000) work on multimedia learning points out that interactivity is critical to long-term retention of information. Although the design and degree of interactivity may vary, Web 2.0 applications do allow users to interact (cognitively, manually, emotionally, and socially) with content, technology tools, experiences, and most importantly, with one another.  

 Third, Web 2.0 applications—unlike many traditional types of software that suffer from feature creep—are easy to use. (This isn't uniformly true. Arguably, a Web 2.0 application such as Google Earth is fairly complex.) For the most part, interfaces are simple so they're easy for technology novices to learn, thus obviating the need for a lot of skills training (we've been able to provide online training via the Web 2.0 application, Dimdim). This relative ease of use means that users are less daunted by an overabundance of menu choices. They don't get lost in a thicket of software features or excessive functionality. And the restrained design of many Web 2.0 applications means participants are able to focus on the core feature(s). For example, social bookmarking sites essentially allow for a few actions—annotating and sharing sites and communicating and collaborating around these sites. But the fundamental action of social bookmarking is tagging—developing metadata based on summations of the attributes of each site (keywords) so that information can be organized and retrieved by these keywords, a process that requires the cognitive skills of classification, categorization, and organization. 

 Fourth, we've seen some evidence that Web 2.0 tools can diversify and broaden traditional online structures of communication in ways that non-Web 2.0 applications may not. For example, the dominant pattern of communication in online learning discussion forums tends to be a hub-and-spoke structure of facilitator (hub) and participants (spokes), with much or most of the discussion emanating to and from the facilitator. The facilitator poses a question, participants respond, and the facilitator acknowledges responses.