General Uses
General use of Social Networking and Web 2.0 tools
Most of the youth, particularly students are already actively involved in using social networking and Web 2.0 sites for various purposes, content creation and conversation outside of the institutions. In one study to find out the effective and innovative use of Web 2.0 technologies for learning, students of ages 11 - 16 were surveyed. 74% reported that they had at least one social networking site account and 78% reported having uploaded pictures, video, or music to the web–with 50% having done so in the previous week. As most parents are still living in a Web 1.0 world, most youth are participating on the Web without the benefit of much guidance or mentoring from the adults.
| S.No. | Purpose of Usage | Activities |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Education | Information searching and retrieval Teaching-learning process Knowledge Processing and Manipulating Assignment sending, submission and correction Testing & Evaluation Content creation, collaboration and dissemination |
| 2 | Entertainment | Music
Video Video production, capturing and recording Video games Podcasting Games and sports |
| 3 | Communication | Communication between peers and colleagues
Personal communication within friends, relatives Academic related communication Communication related to classroom management, examinations, time table, arrangements, important events, etc Any other communication among students and teachers |
| 4 | Business | Purchase or sales or services related information,Product search |
The following Pie Diagram depics the purposes for which the Web 2.0 tools are being used by Student Teachers and Teacher Educators.
Membership in some Popular Social Networking sites
The Web 2.0 tools are more far reaching an extensive medium of personal exchange. It has probably allowed many of its users to interact with many more groups of people disperse around the planet in time and space. All kinds of organizations can benefit out of them. The Internet Software Consortium reports that the growth of Web 2.0 tools is enormous and recently Web 3.0 an even Web 4.0 tools have evolved. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) also confirms that there are more than 100 Web 2.0 available now. The following table shows the popularity of Web 2.0 tools.
| S.No. | Name | Description/Focus | Users | Agegroup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bigadda | Indian Social Networking Site | 30,00,000 | Above 16 |
| 2 | Classmates.com | School, college, work and military | 5,00,00,000 | Above 16 |
| 3 | General | 350,000,000 | Open | |
| 4 | Flixster | Movies | 6,30,00,000 | Above 13 |
| 5 | Flickr | Photo sharing | 3,20,00,000 | Above 13 |
| 6 | Ibibo | Social networking, popular in India | 35,00,000 | Open |
| 7 | Business and professional networking | 6,00,00,000 | Above 18 | |
| 8 | Orkut | Social networking, popular in Brazil and India | 18,00,00,000 | Above 18 |
| 9 | General. Micro-blogging, RSS, updates | 75,000,000 | Open | |
| 10 | Windows Live Spaces | Blogging (formerly MSN Spaces) | 12,00,00,000 | Open |
