ABSTRACT
Web 2.0 social media has the opportunity to change education, but in spite of a great range of teaching and learning possibilities, institutional adoption has lagged. Many students have grown up with Web 2.0 social media applications and are familiar with podcasts and social networking, but many institutions still wonder how to adopt these tools (Barnes & Tynan, 2007). Web 2.0, a term first used in 2004, describes a new way to utilize the World Wide Web as a plat-form where content and applications are not created and published by individuals alone, but are instead continuously modified by all users in collaboration (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). The Web honors multiple forms of intelligence (Brown, 2000). Pictures, audio, video, and hyperlinks to other online resources make Web 2.0 into a network of multiple information dissemination that goes beyond just text. Knowledge is stored, retrieved, created, or amended digitally online in a variety of media forms easily found by a user. Dohn (2009) refers to Web 2.0 as “certain forms of activities or practices … not a binary function, but rather a question of degree” (p. 345). It is then essentially a framework and flexible modality for interaction and shared thinking, and can be considered to be a technology for holding and distributing interaction. Aside from only student-to-student interaction, social media offers the opportunity for student-to-instructor interaction. Students may provide a variety of media for instructor review and feedback. Beyond just online fulfillment of assignments, students may also use social media as a communication tool to provide proof of personal reaction, opinion, and reflection. Social media tools form a conduit for reflective activity in a very rich form.
