Week #3: Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks (1). But what are the main features of those Web pages people see every day when surfing the net? Is there any difference among them? Yes, there is. Web sites can be classified into two types: Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. The first term refers to personal or institutional web sites that are mainly used to publish information. Some typical characteristics of a Web 1.0 site include:

• Static pages instead of dynamic user-generated content.
• The use of framesets.
• There is no direct contact between the user and the site owner (limited contact with the webmaster).
• Online guestbooks.

In contrast, Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications which facilitate interactive information sharing and collaboration on the WWW. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, among others.

Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. They can build on the interactive facilities of Web 1.0 and own the data on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over that data. Web 2.0 websites typically include some of the following features and techniques. Andrew McAfee used the acronym SLATES to refer to them:

• Search: finding information through keyword search.
• Links: guides to other related information.
• Authoring: the ability to create and update content leads to the collaborative work of many rather than just a few web authors. In wikis, users may extend, undo and redo each other's work. In blogs, posts and the comments of individuals build up over time.
• Tags: categorization of content by users adding one-word descriptions to facilitate searching, without dependence on pre-made categories.
• Extensions: software that makes the Web an application platform as well as a document server.
• Signals: The use of syndication technology such as RSS to notify users of content changes.

In our ICT course, the weekly task regarding this topic consisted of creating a static web page using a Web 2.0 application (a blog in http://www.wordpress.com/). We had to build a portfolio in which we show our profile as an English teacher and as a professional in the ELT field. This site has academic information that might be of interest to the ELT world. This was a good experience and we learned how to combine new tools and adding, modifying and even deleting information.

My URL in Wordpress is: http://cireneramirez.wordpress.com/ Feel free to visit it and enjoy it.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web