MAKING THE INTERNET PARTICIPATORY AND DYNAMIC
BY MARK FRYDENBERG
They use it—but may not know it has a name .Most
college students have accounts on Facebook, refer to
Wikipedia when writing a research paper, share
pictures on Flickr, and make phone calls over Skype.
Students and employees use the World Wide Web much
differently today than was possible even five years
ago, when the Web was primarily a tool for
disseminating information.
In 2005, Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media,
publisher of several software and technology books,
coined “Web 2.0” for the ongoing change to a more
participatory and dynamic Web experience. To
introduce these concepts and their underlying
technologies to students, I developed a first-year
undergraduate information technology course with the
theme “Information Technology Through the Lens ofWeb
2.0.” First offered during fall, 2007 at Bentley
College, in Waltham, Mass., the course presented Web
2.0 concepts in a progression that built on previous
learning. (See Figure 1.)
APPRECIATE
A decade ago, Netscape and Mosaic were the two
prominent Web browsers, and most Web pages contained
hyperlinks to other static documents, Websites and
images that took a long time to download over a 56
KB modem. Animated GIFs (graphics files) cycled
through individual image frames in sequence to
convey animation, and Java applets displayed text in
fiery flames. Most home Internet connections were
too slow to support the streaming audio or video
that we take for granted today.
Today, broadband and wireless Internet access are
accessible in homes, offices, schools and coffee
shops. Today’s computers have multiple processors;
memory is cheap; and new formats for compressing
audio and video enable their rapid transfer over the
Internet. TheWorldWideWeb is used to do business,
download entertainment, shop, send messages, meet
new people, and make our voices heard.
PARTICIPATE
Web 2.0 shifts the focus from Websites to Web
applications, where content added by one user
enriches the value of the application for all users.
O’Reilly calls this “harnessing collective
intelligence.” Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us, Google
Maps, Blogger, Wikipedia and Facebook are among the
genre of interactive applications collectively known
as Web 2.0.
The Web 2.0 term for this new model is “Software as
a Service” (SaaS). Both the application and its data
reside “in the cloud” of the Internet and not on the
desktop, so they are accessible from virtually
anywhere.
In a technology course introducing these
concepts, students use many Web 2.0 applications
throughout the semester. They share ideas on a blog
and post class notes on a wiki. They track friends
and social circles on Facebook. They vote on popular
news articles by “digging” them at digg.com, where
the stories that receive the largest number of
“diggs” (votes) appear on the site’s front page.
Such a process democratizes the Web, as now users
can offer their opinions of the day’s top stories or
the usefulness of articles on other topics.
INVESTIGATE
HTML (hypertext markup language) is used to display
information on Web pages. However, XML (extensible
markup language) is a structured format for sharing
videos, photographs, blog posts and news headlines
on Websites different from where they originated.
Orange RSS icons (really simple syndication) as
shown in Figure 2 appear on many Websites to
indicate that their content can be broadcast to
users interested in subscribing to it. This content
is represented internally in XML. After subscribing
to an RSS feed from a blog or news site, you can use
an aggregator program to check periodically to see
if new content has been posted and download if it is
found.
COMMUNICATE
Blogs (short for Web logs) are online journals.
Unlike a traditional Web page that requires
knowledge of HTML coding in order to post
information, updating a blog is as simple as
completing an online form. Blogs have become a forum
for individual creative expression — and have
generated a number of “citizen journalists.” Many
bloggers have developed large followings.
Blogger.com andWordpress.com are two popular
blogging providers.
A course blog may augment or replace a traditional
course management system. Both teacher and students
can post content about a class session, make
comments and ask questions. Communication is not
limited to the written word. Audio and video
podcasts are a useful tool to record course lectures
or summarize course concepts. Having students,
rather than the teacher, create the media empowers
them to not only share their course knowledge, but
also master podcasting skills. Apple’s iTunes is a
popular aggregator for downloading podcasts and
managing the associated multimedia files.
COLLABORATE
Collaboration is a core capability of Web 2.0. New
software tools like Google Docs (docs.google.com)
make it possible for people separated geographically
to work together in real time over the Internet As
is common to most Web 2.0 applications, the
documents are centrally stored for access over the
Internet. This facilitates team projects, as
participants can all edit the same document at the
same time rather than e-mailing different versions
back and forth. In a simple sense, this mimics the
real-world experience of working with team members
in remote locations.
Students use wikis (hosted at pbwiki. com) to work
together during the semester. They sign up for group
projects, post and answer each other’s study
questions prior to an exam, and share links to
interesting Websites. Unlike blogs, a wiki
contributor may edit, change or delete another
contributor’s entry. All changes are logged, so it
is possible to revert back to an earlier version of
a wiki page if necessary. Students share in the
responsibility of creating and organizing course
materials for themselves and their classmates.
CREATE
Many Web 2.0 applications allow users to create
their own organizational schemes by assigning
descriptive tags to Web resources. For example,
visitors to Flickr.com may upload, organize and
search for photographs based on their assigned tags.
del.icio.us is a site for book marking favorite Web
pages. Tags and related information are stored on a
server, making them available on any computer with
an Internet connection. Displayed with each tag is
the number of people who tagged the same article and
links to other articles or Websites containing the
same tags. Because people assign them, tags often
better indicate the quality or usefulness of a
resource than a simple Web search on key words. This
approach blends a “folksonomy” with a more
traditional taxonomy for organizing resources on the
Web. A tag cloud is a popular way to display tags.
(See Figure 3).
Mashups are at the heart of many Web 2.0
applications that integrate data from different
sources or corporate applications. Companies such as
Google, eBay and Amazon.com provide application
programming interfaces so that others may access
their data to use in their own applications. This is
usually a task that requires significant programming
experience.
To combine several concepts presented throughout the
semester, students used Microsoft Popfly (www.popfly.com)
to create their own mashups. By dragging, dropping
and connecting blocks, Popfly makes it easy to mix
data from a variety of sources in order to create
new applications.
Popfly blocks represent ways to access, process, or
display information. For example, Figure 4 shows the
design of a Facebook Friends Map. First, a Facebook
block calls an operation to get a list of Facebook
friends. By connecting the Facebook block to the
GeoNames block, it is possible to determine the
latitude and longitude for each friend’s city and
state obtained from Facebook. Finally, by connecting
both the GeoNames block and the Facebook block to
the Virtual Earth Mapping block, the mashup displays
the friend’s name and photo in the appropriate
location on the map, as shown in Figure 5.
CONCLUSION
“Web
2.0” implies a new milestone in how we have come to
use the Internet. The WorldWideWeb’s evolution is
the result of advances in both technology
infrastructure and in how people embrace technology.
The Web has evolved into a platform facilitating new
ways of information sharing, collaboration and
communication. Teaching Web 2.0 concepts and using
its tools in an introductory technology course
offers students new ways to interact with their data
and their peers as they develop skills that will be
valuable to them as future information technology
professionals.
Mark Frydenberg is a senior lecturer and software
specialist in the Computer Information Systems
Department at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass.,
where he teaches an innovative introductory
information technology course using Web 2.0
technologies as a tool for learning IT concepts.
Frydenberg has published several articles and spoken
internationally on teaching with emerging
technologies in the college classroom.
Bentley College (www.bentley.edu) is a national
leader in business education. Centered on education
and research in business and related professions,
Bentley blends the breadth and technological
strength of a university with the values and student
focus of a small college. Its undergraduate
curriculum combines business study with a strong
foundation in the arts and sciences. Offerings at
the McCallum Graduate School emphasize the impact of
technology on business practice, including M.B.A.
and Master of Science programs, Ph.D. programs in
accountancy and in business, and selected executive
programs. Enrolling approximately 4,000 full-time
undergraduate, 250 adult part-time undergraduate and
1,270 graduate students, Bentley is located minutes
west of Boston.
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BY JERRY ROCHE
“The e-learning and knowledge segments are
lagging some of the other segments in terms
of Web 2.0 tools and technology becoming
mainstream,” says Joe Lichtenberg, vice
president of business development for Eluma,
an emerging Web 2.0 developer and marketer.
“In the past, a lot of the tools for
knowledge management were more structured,
rigid and hierarchical than the Web 2.0
technologies, which are just begging for
engagement. E-learning enterprises are ripe
for reaping the benefits to be gained from
Web 2.0 technologies.”
Yet enterprises that embraceWeb 2.0
elearning tools should have no difficulty
integrating them into the workplace,
according to Richard Buck, Eluma’s CEO.
“The efficiencies that an enterprise can
reap are extremely great,” he notes. “When
enterprises find out that users can do it
themselves, they can pick up Web 2.0
technologies the next day. They don’t bury
it for two years — it just gets done.”
Because the domestic economy and workforce
are becoming more knowledge based, the
market for Web 2.0 applications is enormous.
“A couple of dynamics are working to
accelerate the rate that organizations are
looking at Web 2.0 tools,” says Lichtenberg.
“One is that knowledge workers are more
pervasive in all industries. Knowledge
workers need better, more efficient, more
seamless ways to capture their research as
an integral part of their daily activities,
not as an additional set of steps that will
slow them down — especially in a
collaborative environment. There’s also been
an influx of Gen-Y workers who are used to
working with Web 2.0, so bringing those
kinds of tools to the workplace is a
no-brainer.”
WEB 2.0’S FUTURE GROWTH WILL BE IN MORE
EFFICIENT TOOLS.
“We’ve
been in the Internet space, the knowledge
management space and around software for 25
years each, so the daily explosion of
Internet technologies and Web 2.0 services
is clear to us,” says Lichtenberg. “What
strikes us is lack of productivity tools.”
Adds Buck: “A huge amount of Web 2.0’s
future growth will be in allowing workers to
share their normal, everyday work instead of
forcing them to become
applicreators.
That’ll allow Web 2.0 to take a huge step
forward.”
SECURITY CONCERNS?
One possible bump in the road for Websites
that employ Web 2.0 technology is security:
users are vulnerable to hackers.
“Bad guys have developed malicious content
to take advantage of some Web 2.0 platforms
and infect site visitors with crimeware,”
observes Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology
officer for Finjan, Inc. “We found hundreds
of such malicious cases on MySpace, Yahoo,
and all the top-rated sites. And our trend
reports indicate even more serious threats
in the future.”
Historically, “Trojan horse” software has
been successful in installing backdoor
programs into the computers of unsuspecting
users. Today, “Trojan 2.0” programs are even
more sophisticated.
“The Web 2.0 platform is a very efficient
intermediator, so the Trojan doesn’t have to
communicate directly to the hacker,” notes
Ben-Itzhak. “It can actually place and store
malicious commands on a Web 2.0 site. So
then the hacker can visit the site
periodically and collect the data, remove it
from that server, and use it for his or her
own benefit. The new Trojans don’t even
disclose the hacker’s URL location, so it’s
difficult to find and stop multiple
offenders.”
Ben-Itzhak says that Web 2.0 site owners
should inspect uploaded users’ content just
before they are about to publish it on their
site. This process is very simple and very
effective in minimizing or halting
infection.
Individual users should make certain that
their operating systems have the latest
security patch from the vendor: Microsoft,
Mac, Linux, or any of the others.
“Additionally,” Ben Itzhak says, “users can
buy security technologies that inspect
incoming content in real time to understand
whether it’s good or bad.
“This type of computer technology does not
rely on signatures or URLs like antivirus or
URL-filtering programs do. It reads and
inspects each individual code on the Web
page before it shows on your browser.
Although Finjan sells its products to the
enterprise market, Finjan’s SecureBrowsing,
is a free browser add-on for end-users
utilizing the same technology in use by
large enterprises. Using Finjan Secure
Browsing, what the user sees on the computer
screen is a green dot (good content) or red
dot (bad content) alongside the URL site.”
Reportedly, Web 2.0 security problems will
get worse before they get better. As long as
the attack methods are successful, and as
long as malicious sites are not being
blacklisted, hackers will continue to take
advantage of them.
ED. NOTE: Eluma markets a desktop Web
organizer that lets you collect, organize
and share any and all of the information you
find on the Web. For more information, visit
the Website www.beta.eluma.com. Finjan, Inc.
provides a free browser plug-in available
for downloading that employs the same
technology that the company provides to
large enterprises. For more information,
visit the Website www.finjan.com.
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