Web 2.0 and How it fits into a UDL Classroom

Technology is in everything we do, we have technology in our cars, homes, hands, and even our classrooms. Technology is not only apart of how we live, but it is the way that we live. Before I speak about Web 2.0 and how it effects our society, I want to start from the beginning where technology first started, Web 1.0. In the required reading for this weeks' module Web 2.0 A New Generation of Learners and Education by Dina Rosen and Charles Nelson it discuses and compares the ideas between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Rosen and Nelson introduce Web 1.0 as a phase built in the early 90's, which "focused on presenting information." In a sense technology during the 1.0 phase was used by a limited amount of people "who had knowledge of Hypertext Markup Language or to those who had the technical know-how to use sophisticated publishing tools" (Nelson and Rosen, 2008) Unlike Web 2.0, Web 1.0 was used as a "read-only" but with advancing technology things dramatically changed in Web 2.0, such as enabling both presentation and participation.

Currently, we are living in a Web 2.0 world where knowledge is simply a click away. The web 2.0 revolution has effected everyone around the world from older adults who have become "digital immigrants" to young children who do not know anything different from the easy use and social sharing in technology, "digital natives." "Web 2.0 applications allow people to interact, collaborate, and share their creations (text, photo, audio, or video)with others: They allow all to participate in the conversation of learning and knowledge making." (Nelson and Rosen, 2008) With the consistency of always being able to collaborate and share creations, Web 2.0  can help reach a broad spectrum of students. Especially in an exceptional education class room, utilizing Web 2.0 creates the best UDL classroom for the simple fact that it can be used in multiple ways. Web 2.0 can help build social connections with the use of social networks. It can help visually show videos, blogs, and articles on different ways of learning a concept. It can help teachers view different methods and ways learners learn and how to teach them. Also it can help share methods that has worked with a broad range of students so teachers can reuse it and possibly alter it to make it better. Web 2.0 makes it easier to reach all students and gives them a chance to receive an equal opportunity at a more advanced education.

Although Web 2.0 is personally a great mechanism to advance a child's education especially in the exceptional education department there are also some drawbacks. Drawbacks can be sites like Wikipedia, where anyone can easily adjust the information and make up their own idea of what happened.