Select one ( or more) Web 2.0 applications and complete the following tasks:
What is the application designed to do?
How could it be re-purposed as a learning tool?
What are the actual and potential affordances of this application?
How would you justify your choice of this application?
Consider how you might use some Web 2.0 applications to enhance the way information, ideas and concepts are presented on your Blog
My Opinions:
1.What is the application designed to do?
“Google Sites started out as JotSpot which is a software company and offered enterprise social software. It was targeted mainly at small-sized and medium-sized businesses.”(From Wiki, Google_Sites) Then, on May 21, 2008, Google Sites became available for free separately from Google Apps.( "Google Sites Help Group", 2008). As the Google Sites Overview (From Google), “Google Sites is the easiest way to make information accessible to people. In other words, Google Sites is a good and easy platform to create, edit, and share all kinds of information. In fact, people can post and upload everything they liked and publish to all people on earth.
2. How could it be re-purposed as a learning tool?
At first, every people’s Google Sites is customized by individuals. Meanwhile, the basic functions contain editing, searching, uploading, storage, inserting and sharing all kinds of information, such as documents, audio or visual contents, photographs and even e-books. Besides, it can also link different web pages, and give the publishers some comments and reflections. In addition, one of the most outstanding features is that people can cooperate in their work together.
As the Google Site widely used, especially in educational area, it becomes a wonderful learning tool. More professionals, teachers, and students use Google Sites to collect and share information. Take our homework for instance, some classmates choose Google Sites to post their homework. At first, they create a share-account. Then, every week they would paste their articles to their share Google Sites. Apparently, it is an individual and collaborative process. The classmates not only do their homework, but also share their collective opinions. Sometimes, they also add attachments to the Google Sites, if they reference others’ contents. It is a quite wonderful function which provides the originals to every reader.
In a word, Google Sites as a digital resource, supports learning (Wiley, 2000), is used to mediate learning (Wiley & Edwards, 2002) and built in a lesson (McGreal, 2004). Besides, it can be regarded as “stand-alone unit of instruction” (E-learning Competency Center, 2003). Overall, Google Sites as a presentation tool, could “direct instruction and presentation resources designed with the intention to transmit specific subject matter” (Churchill, 2006).
3. What are the actual and potential affordances of this application?
At first, many people use it, because people have the need to access different information as quick as possible. Google Sites provides a useful platform to access and share information. Besides, Google Sites as a presentation object, “attempts to transmit knowledge to learners by displaying messages representing chunks of subject matter”(Churchill, 2006). The widely used formats in Google Sites are sharing documents; publish slide presentations, embedding videoed or audio-recorded segments which rise to people’s meet for accessing information and knowledge.
4. How would you justify your choice of this application?
Before this, I have no similar experience. Using Google Sites for group work and activities is a new experience. By using Google Sites, I can easily search some educational and instructional documents, PPT, e-books, and anything others. Moreover, I can share my experience, my photos, and anything I liked, such as video, software. Therefore, from my experience, I deeply feel that Google Sites as a specific application of presentation objects is mostly developed to support traditional pedagogical approaches, and also support more contemporary pedagogies and activities (Churchill, 2006).
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