Editors: Last name, Initials. (Eds.). (20xx).

Title of Book.
Santa Rosa, California: Informing Science Press. (pp. xx-xx).

Chapter X

Taxonomy of Web 2.0 Applications with

Educational Potential
Tihomir Orehovački, Goran Bubaš, and Andreja Kovačić

Introduction
The Web was conceived as a virtual place where interested individuals
would be able to publish, search and browse content of all kinds as well
as interact in virtual spaces like forums and chat rooms. In less than a
decade, and as a consequence of the development of new technologies,
the Web has evolved into an even more interactive, dynamic and flexi-
ble environment. With their emphasis on collaboration, distribution of
content and social networking, Web 2.0 applications have facilitated
educational activities of individuals and groups worldwide. The imple-
mentation of social web applications in education has led to new con-
cepts of teaching and learning, such as E-learning 2.0 (Downes, 2005),
Curriculum 2.0 (Edson, 2007), Pedagogy 2.0 (McLoughlin & Lee,
2007), and University 2.0 (Barnes & Tynan, 2007). Web 2.0 tools can be
used to stimulate students to collaborate and exchange experiences as
well as create and/or organize (new) knowledge for their peers and
other users of the Internet (Orehovački, Bubaš, & Konecki, 2009). A
large number of specialized Web 2.0 applications have been developed
that can support and supplement traditional e-learning. Moreover, it
must be noted that even though some Web 2.0 applications were not
primarily created with education in mind, their features and advantages
can still be used in e-learning (Orehovački, Konecki, & Radošević,
2008).
In order to help teachers in selecting web services that are useful for
sharing learning materials, fostering communication between teacher
and students, and helping students to collaborate with one another, this
chapter presents a taxonomy of Web 2.0 applications with educational
potential. For each category of the taxonomy, the most popular repre-
sentatives are mentioned, followed by a brief explanation of their im-
plementation in the e-learning environment.

Classification of Web 2.0 applications

Ever since the term ‘Web 2.0’ (O'Reilly, 2005) was coined, a multitude
of diverse web services, only some of which were specialized for e-
learning, have emerged. Various Web 2.0 tools (wikis, blogs, video
sharing tools, social networking sites, etc.) create pedagogical oportuni-
ties related to open publishing, new communication styles, sharing of
personal identity and experience, co-creation and collaboration, and
content management (Waycott, Gray, Clerehan, Hamilton, Richardson,
Sheard, & Thompson, 2010). However, teachers and students are fac-
ing the challenge of selecting appropriate and sufficiently useful Web
2.0 applications for the implementation of e-learning activities. One of
the initial steps to addressing that challenge is the creation of a taxon-
omy of Web 2.0 applications with educational potential. Accordingly,
for the purpose of categorization of Web 2.0 applications a three-
dimesional model was developed (see Figure 1).
The first dimension refers to the type of Web 2.0 applications (wiki,
blog, microblog, social network, social bookmark, mashup, podcast, e-
portfolio, virtual world, note-taking & editing services, office applica-
tions, source code publishing services, mind mapping & flowcharting
services, creative learning applications, multimedia publishing services,
instant messaging services, audio & video forums, and video conferenc-
ing services) while the second dimension is related to their function
(collaboration, sharing, communication, knowledge organization, learn-
ing support, and artifacts integration). The third dimension represents
cognitive processes which are part of the revised Bloom's taxonomy: re-
membering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating, and creating
(Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001).
Every social web service that will be further discussed can be posi-
tioned in one or more intersections of these dimensions. For instance,
the Web 2.0 tool Delicious can be categorized as a social bookmarking
service that enables sharing and knowledge organization, and facilitates cog-
nitive processes like remembering, analyzing and evaluating.
Figure 1: Three-dimensional taxonomy model
The Flickr service can be categorized as a social network for sharing of
photographs/illustrations which primarily supports the cognitive func-
tions of remembering and understanding. The Bubbl.us web application can
be categorized as a mind mapping service designed for sharing that sup-
ports virtually all cognitive functions. Finally, the Google Docs tool is
in the office applications category and is predominantly designed for collab-
oration and sharing, with a potential to support cognitive functions like
applying, analysing, evaluating and creating.

It should also be noted that the functions and cognitive processes,

though often intertwined, may vary depending on how a particular Web
2.0 application is used. For example, tagging podcasts and videocasts
using the Veotag application will primarily imply understanding and
remembering on the part of the learner. On the other hand, if students
need to insert tags and add their annotations to a podcast or a
videocast, they will need to employ higher order cognitive processes
like analyzing and creating.
With regards to the categories entitled “Collaboration”, “Communica-
tion”, and “Knowledge Organization”, we assigned tools that most
prominently represent those categories (for example, flowcharts as
knowledge organizers). Tools are not always exclusive to a single category,
however; some tools can be associated with multiple categories (for
example, flowcharts also are used for collaboration and sharing).
Similarly, as suggested by multiple associations within the model, there
are applications that are not explicitly included in any of the aforemen-
tioned three categories, and are discussed elsewhere in the chapter, that
potentially also deliver some of those functions. For example, blogs,
although primarily used for collaboration and communication, can make for
a powerful knowledge organization tool.
Although a variety of different social media types exist, the scope of
this chapter will be Web 2.0 applications that can be used for educa-
tional activities. In the following subsections, we shall describe various
types of Web 2.0 applications and offer examples of their educational
use as reported in recent literature.
Wikis
A wiki is a set of interconnected and structured pages that provides a
new dimension to information exchange and knowledge management.
The word wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for “quick”, which
emphasizes the wiki’s main feature: fast and easy management of con-
tent. The first wiki was developed in 1994 and contained only text.
Today's wiki systems such as MediaWiki and Wikispaces allow the user to
add multimedia content and thus represent a substitute for personal
web pages, forums, etc. Owing to these advantages, wikis started to be
actively used in the education domain even before the emergence of the
Web 2.0 paradigm. The most successful example is undoubtedly Wik-
ipedia – the online encyclopedia which is built on the “collective intelli-
gence” of Internet users.
Wikis allow users to create repositories of knowledge, interact with
their peers, and participate in projects as part of a group (Cole, 2009).
Through asynchronous collaboration, content in the wiki is gradually
expanded and improved with each entry. In order to prevent undesira-
ble changes and inappropriate entries, each user’s activity is stored sep-
arately in a log. Wikis also offer support for a variety of approaches to
learning, especially those within the collaborative and constructivist
paradigm (Parker & Chao, 2007).
Using a wiki in an educational environment has three benefits:
1. Wikis allow many users to participate in the preparation of in-
structional material. Wikis are well suited for collaborative ac-
tivities. Students can use a wiki for collaborating on project
documentation and tracking the execution of project activities.
In addition, students can prepare a summary of literature read-
ings and publish it on a common wiki page. The result of such
educational activities is a critical review or a bibliography which
can be useful for learning or revision of the teaching content.
2. Wikis allow different types of users to participate in their con-
struction. When used for educational purposes, wikis can be
effectively used by both teachers and students. Teachers can
use a wiki to publish lecture resources, post information related
to the course, respond to student questions, etc. On the other
hand, students can use a wiki to ask questions and comment
on (and thereby supplement) the published educational re-
sources.
 3. Wikis foster centralization of e-activities. If a wiki is the only
application that is used in the educational process, it serves as a
focal point for implementation of collaborative e-activities.
However, if other Web 2.0 applications are used in addition to
the wiki, the wiki's main function is that of integrating re-
sources from different web locations (Bubaš, Orehovački,
Balaban, & Ćorić, 2010; Bubaš, Ćorić, & Orehovački, 2011a).
In recent years, wikis have been implemented in a variety of educational
activities including teaching a foreign language (Kovačić, Bubaš, &
Zlatović, 2008; Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010), learning mathematics
(Krebs, Ludwig, & Müller, 2010) and statistics (Neumann & Hood,
2009), project-based learning (Elgort, Smith, & Toland, 2008), written
assignments (Warschauer, 2010), information systems teaching (Kane
& Fichman, 2009), etc.

Blogs
Originally conceived as a web log where individuals publish ideas, notes,
links and comments, blogs have evolved into a social web service where
students can learn in interesting and entirely new ways. In education, a
student or teacher can use a blog as a personal diary on which the con-
tents are published in reverse chronological order. All blogs together
make a subworld of user-generated content which is called the blog-
osphere. Although blogs and wikis share several characteristics such as
their ease of use and the variety of e-learning activities that can be im-
plemented using them, these two types of web applications are concep-
tually very different. For example, a wiki page can be edited by more
than one user, while blog posts are usually only edited by a single user
(their owner). Furthermore, blogs offer greater possibility of asynchro-
nous interaction among students and between students and teachers by
means of comments on published posts. In that way blogs have be-
come a means for both communication and collaboration, and can
therefore have a significant impact on students’ learning (Hall & Da-
vison, 2007).
Both teachers and students can benefit from using popular blogging
tools or services like WordPress, TypePad, Blogger and Weebly. By using a
blog students can publish their assignments, make critical reviews of
literature, develop online materials for learning or even create a portfo-
lio of their work. On the other hand, through a blog teachers can in-
form students about news concerning the course, publish lecture re-
sources, and exchange tips on teaching with colleagues who teach the
same or similar courses. Besides the aforementioned functions, a blog
can be used for dissemination of project and research results among
university faculties (Loving, Schroeder, Kang, Shimek, & Herbert,
2007) and for communication between university/college leaders and
current and prospective students, alumni, and community (Wyld, 2008).
Some authors emphasize that blogging influences the development of
new skills and the improvement of existing skills such as critical think-
ing and problem solving (Kim, 2008), written and spoken expression
(Sun, 2009; Akçay & Arslan, 2010; Montero-Fleta & Pérez-Sabater,
2010), organization and retrieval of information (Tekinarslan, 2008) and
well as scientific and professional research (Mortensen & Walker, 2002;
Chong, 2010). Owing to all the advantages and characteristics men-
tioned so far, blogs have found a wide application in education, espe-
cially in learning a foreign language (Jones & Bissoonauth-Bedford,
2008; Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010; Noytim, 2010; Wei, 2010), pro-
gramming (Ramasamy, Valloo, & Nadan, 2010), social work and politi-
cal science (Pimpare & Fast, 2008), building collaborative learning
communities among diverse student populations (Anderson & Lin,
2009), teachers’ knowledge management and professional development
(Yang, 2008; Zhen, Tang, & Zhou, 2010).

Microblogs
Microblogs are special types of blogs that possess extended social net-
work features and which limit user posts to a small number of charac-
ters (for instance, the Twitter microblog only allows posts of up to 140
characters). Microblogs are an informal type of communication where
teachers and students can follow each other and respond to messages
that are sent directly to them. Accordingly, microblogs are suitable for
implementation of both teacher and student centered educational activ-
ites (Ramsden, 2009). Because of their ease of use, microblogs give
students the opportunity to ask questions and exchange thoughts, ideas
and results of their work in one place.
There are two basic features of a microblog: mobility, and instant feed-
back on the completed or ongoing educational activities. Microblogs
can be read and written using either specialized web services (e.g. Twit-
ter, Jaiku, Plurk, and Tumblr) or free mobile applications (e.g. short mes-
sage services – SMS, or instant messaging tools - IM). Using these tools
and services, teachers can easily monitor individual or group student
progress as well as the educational process in an ongoing course. In
higher education, Microblogs have been used to enhance learning in
language and culture studies (Antenos-Conforti, 2009; Borau, Ullrich,
Feng, & Shen, 2009), government studies (Jaworowski, 2010), scientific
writing (Ebner & Maurer, 2009), literacy studies (Mills & Chandra,
2011), and knowledge management (Holotescu & Grosseck, 2009).

Social Networks
Social networks are web services that allow for communication, collab-
oration, and connectivity between individuals with similar interests, as
well as sharing of all types of resources. A social networking revolution
began in 2003 with the public launch of Friendster. The main idea of this
Web based application was to have a place where everyone could set up
a profile and invite friends to join a dinner party. Less than a year after
Friendster went public, Faceebok was launched. By adding university and
high school students, professionals inside corporate networks, and
eventually everyone who had access to the web, Faceebook quickly be-
came the world’s most popular social networking site. Currently, it has
more than 500 milion active users who spend about 700 bilion minutes
on the site every month (Facebook, 2011).
The ease of use, regular updating, spontaneous connectivity and the
possibility of informal learning are just some reasons why social net-
works are being adopted rapidly by millions of users (Ajjan & Harts-
horne, 2008). Depending on their basic characteristics (such as the
number and type of users), social networks can be classified into three
main categories.
The first category consists of general social networks that have the larg-
est number of users due to their interactive tools and features. This
category includes social networks Facebook and MySpace. Students main-
ly use them for interaction with peers, discussing problems encountered
during their studies and commenting on social situations (Selwyn,
2007). In this way, students actively participate in informal learning
(Gillet, El Helou, Yu, & Salzmann, 2008). Considering that most Face-
book users are between 18 and 24 years of age (Morrison, 2010), that
network is convenient for exchanging knowledge and experiences
among young people, especially students. General social networks can
be used in the educational process because of numerous advantages
they offer to students, including peer feedback, active participation,
association with the social context, and collaboration (Mason, 2006).
The second category consists of social networks such as Linkedln, Re-
searchGate and Academia.edu that are intended for the exchange of expe-
riences and skills between experts and scholars from certain areas. By
opening a profile on one of these networks, students can connect and
interact with experts who have practical experience in a specific field,
and thereby deepen the theoretical knowledge they acquired at universi-
ty. In addition, the aforementioned social networks can serve as a
source of information about recent scientific and professional papers in
the area in which students are involved. It must be noted that most of
the profiles on Linkedln belong to adults (Royal Pingdom, 2010) and
therefore this social network could also serve as a platform for lifelong
learning.
The last category of social networks consists of sites like Ning and So-
cialGo, which can be categorized as online community sites. This type of
social networks allow the creation of more isolated online environ-
ments with a potential for effective interaction between groups of stu-
dents and teachers in a hybrid academic course (Holcomb, Brady, &
Smith, 2009; Bubaš, Ćorić & Orehovački, 2010). These sites are also
suitable for teacher education (Olcese, 2010).

Social Bookmarks
Social bookmarking is the process of categorizing, storing, referencing
and searching web resource URLs (online documents, web sites, web
pages). Categorization of such web resources is performed by using
individually selected keywords known as tags that uniquely describe a
web location (or a link to an online document). These tags simplify
access to thematically related content. Tags are often visualized via a tag
cloud where the font size determines relative importance or popularity
of the tag and facilitates search and navigation of saved links.
Bookmarks can be public or private. If they are public, users of popular
web services like Delicious, Diigo, and StumbleUpon can see who created
each bookmark and when this was done, which supports the initiation
and continuation of social relationships between individuals with simi-
lar interests. In addition, users can see how many people used the same
tag, as well as browse and examine all the resources that the tag is asso-
ciated with (Coutinho & Bottentuit Junior, 2008). Using social book-
marking services, the user community creates a structure of keywords,
popularly called ‘folksonomy’, which describes all the saved web links
(Val, 2007).
The main advantage of social bookmarking services is that they make
stored web resources more readily available. Specifically, if a student
creates bookmarks to various resources by using the bookmarking op-
tion in their web browser, that repository of bookmarks will only be
accessible to users of that specific device (computer, phone, etc). If the
student uses a social bookmarking service to create their bookmarks,
however, that repository will be accessible from any computer connect-
ed to the Internet. For the students, the creation and sharing of such
resources can reduce the cost of teaching materials and literature neces-
sary for the completion of the course (Farwell & Waters, 2010). Addi-
tionally, classification and organization of web resources through a
public and open interface has been shown to have a positive effect on
students’ problem solving ability (Hsu, Wang, Xie, & Tzeng, 2010).
Finally, some social bookmarking services such as CiteULike, CiteSeer
and Connotea specialize in tagging, organizing, sharing, and saving
scholary papers. Given that the quality of a research paper is measured
by the number of citations, the number of bookmarks and imparted
tags may become a new metric for the evaluation of publication popu-
larity and quality (Yanbe, Jatowt, Nakamura & Tanaka, 2007).

Mashups
Sometimes the educators and/or students need to perform a variety of
educational activities with several web applications. In that case it can
be very difficult for the teacher to track how students are adding or
updating content within a course’s virtual learning environment – this is
especially true if there are large number of students. Likewise, students
who are involved in a variety of team and individual learning activities
sometimes have to follow regularly updated information from various
web sources, which can be time consuming. A possible solution to this
problem is a web application that tracks changes to all relevant web
resources – such an application is called a mashup. Specifically, a mashup
is a feed reader (aggregator) that checks user-subscribed Internet re-
sources for new or updated content. These readers are built to work
with standard communication protocols such as Really Simple Syndication
(RSS) or Atom. A special type of mashup that facilitates informal learn-
ing by means of remixing the content and interaction through different
communication channels is denoted as a Personal Learning Environment -
PLE (Schaffert & Hilzensauer, 2008).
Both students and teachers can subscribe to a large number of online
services and resources including blogs, wikis, podcasts, e-mail, status
updates on social networking sites, social bookmarks, etc. Furthermore,
they can create their own RSS feeds and thus enable all interested users
to subscribe to podcasts or posts they publish through various mecha-
nisms (blogs, wikis, etc). A feed usually consists of a summary and/or
links to content from the subscribed Web location. If the user is inter-
ested in the overall content that is added or updated, a click on the link
located on the feed will automatically redirect him/her to the site where
the content is originally posted.
Creating RSS feeds with web services Dapper or Ponyfish consists of only
a few steps. First, it is necessary to choose a web site for which the RSS
feed is being created. Next, parts of the web site which the user wants
to track and which will appear in a feed need to be selected. The proce-
dure ends by generating the link that needs to be uploaded into the feed
reader so that the user can start monitoring the activity at the desired
site.
The most popular mashup platforms are iGoogle, MyYahoo, Netvibes and
Protopage. Mashups designed specifically for educational use include
ReMashed (Drachsler, Pecceu, Arts, Hutten, Rutledge, van Rosmalen,
Hummel & Koper, 2010), SituMash for situational language teaching
(Huang, Yang & Hwang, 2010) and MeMeTEKA for the development
of Personal Learning Environments (Casquero, Portillo, Ramón
Ovelar, Romo & Benito, 2008). Due to their features, Personal Learn-
ing Environments are considered to be one of the most challenging
aspects in the future of technology enhanced learning (Auinger, Ebner,
Nedbal, & Holzinger, 2009). This is evidenced by the recent research
concerning a generic platform (mashup personal learning environment –
MUPPLE) for end-user development of Personal Learning Environ-
ments (Wild, Mödritscher & Sigurdarson, 2008).

Podcasts
Podcasting is the process of producing and distributing audio or video
files using specialized web applications. Perhaps the most popular ex-
ample of educational podcasts is iTunes U, which demonstrates how
such files can be distributed among teachers and students at many US
universities (McKinney, Dyck & Luber, 2009). In terms of their primary
purpose, podcasting services can be divided into three groups: adminis-
trative (e.g. guides), special lecture series (e.g. guest lectures) and class-
room podcasts (curriculum teaching) (Vogele & Gard, 2006). The latter
is further subdivided into substitutional, supplementary and creative
podcasts (McGarr, 2009).
Podcasts can be used to substitute or supplement teaching materials. In
such cases, students do not need to record all the details mentioned by
the teacher during the lectures, but can rather refer back to the podcast
any time they want. When students are absent from lectures, they can
listen to the podcast to catch up on the content they missed. Podcasts
can also serve as replacement for classic presentation of student papers
in hybrid instruction. Namely, instead of presenting their work in front
of an audience, students can create an audio or video podcast in which
they show and explain their work by combining different multimedia
content. Using podcasts, teaching materials can be adapted to the style
and pace of student learning. After downloading audio or video pod-
casts from the web, students can listen to them or view them with their
favorite multimedia player whenever they want and as often as they
need.
In terms of their primary characteristics, podcasting web services can
be grouped into three categories: audio podcasts, video podcasts and
screencasts. Web applications for audio podcasting are exclusively used
for recording audio content through a microphone, mobile phone or
webcam. This group of tools includes AudioPal, Woices and Podomatic.
Besides the ability to create new audio podcasts, registered users have
the option to browse and listen to podcasts created and posted by other
users. The second category consists of video podcasts that can be made
using JayCut, Yodio and Masher. A video podcast is a combination of
photo, audio and video content, and various effects. When making a
podcast, there is an option to use one’s own multimedia resources, a
number of prepared files stored on the server, or any multimedia re-
source that is accessible via its URL. These applications allow users to
not only make video podcasts, but also to categorize, publish, share and
search for them. The last category refers to screencasts that can be
created with web applications like ScreenCastle, Screencast-O-Matic,
ScreenToaster or Screenr. By using these tools, both students and teachers
are able to create multimedia tutorials that represent step-by-step
demonstrations. Some examples include a tutorial showing how to
solve a programming or mathematical task, or an explanation of differ-
ences between formal and informal letters in learning a foreign lan-
guage.
Podcasts have been applied successfully in numerous educational sce-
narios, including: biology courses (Ortiz, Carvajal, Coral, Barrios &
Henao, 2010), politics and international relations (Ralph, Head & Light-
foot, 2010), language learning (Gale & Kung, 2009), and medical cours-
es (Beylefeld, Hugo & Geyer, 2008; Vogt, Schaffner, Ribar & Chavez,
2010).

E-portfolios
An e-portfolio is a web application that allows teachers and students to
register and present the skills, knowledge and experience they acquired
over a certain period of time. It consists of artifacts and digital materials
in which the ideas, activities and achievements of portfolio owner(s) are
stored. The collection and organization of content in an e-portfolio is
performed by using a variety of interactive applications (feed, blog), and
the content is commonly presented with different media (text, image,
audio or video podcast). There are numerous benefits which teachers
and students can gain from e-portfolios, including: developing a plan of
study, training and promotion, career planning, archiving of the
achievements and experiences, connecting into interest groups, devel-
oping curriculum, managing and updating a dynamic resume, alumni
development self-presentation and sharing resources with others (stu-
dents, teachers, employers, community) (Reese & Levy, 2009). There-
fore, e-portfolio applications allow for a funtional integration of differ-
ent Web 2.0 applications and can be used as a focal point for imple-
mentation of e-learning activities.
Open source web services that are most commonly implemented for
the development of e-portfolios are Mahara and Elgg. Whereas the for-
mer enables integration with learning management systems and easy
generation of a CV in the Europass format, the latter is a special kind
of social network containing all the necessary modules to store and organ-
ize artifacts. It must be emphasized that both Mahara and Elgg don't
offer free accounts to the public, but must be implemented and hosted
by an institution or commercial support company. In the past few
years, the popularity of e-portfolio systems has increased and they have
been implemented for a variety of activities at many universities includ-
ing: independent learning and collaborative projects at Kansai Universi-
ty (Yamamoto & Kubota, 2010), lifelong learning at Queensland Uni-
versity of Technology (McAllister, Hallam & Harper, 2008), teacher
education at Auckland University of Technology (Maher, 2009), infor-
mation and business systems education at University of Zagreb (Bala-
ban and Bubaš, 2010), etc.

Virtual worlds
A virtual world is a computer-simulated 3D environment in which
individuals communicate and collaborate via avatars. Basic characteris-
tics of such collaborative virtual environments are participation in a
community, acquisition of social skills and learning through fun.
Through social interaction and active participation in games and simu-
lations which are part of virtual worlds, students can better understand
complex concepts, learn something new and participate in the creation
of knowledge. Namely, students can gain stronger comprehension and
deeper knowledge if they perform educational activities in authentic
context which they find amusing (Kluge & Riley, 2008).
Teachers can use a virtual world to present educational content in an
entertaining and interesting way or set tasks in which students will need
to show their imagitiveness, creativity and intelligence. A virtual world
like Second Life can encompass almost all the artifacts mentioned in the
description of preceding types of Web 2.0 applications. In a single
place, students can watch video podcasts, play educational games,
browse and read professional and scholarly literature, attend and active-
ly participate in lectures, seminars and conferences, visit and explore
historical and geographical locations, learn about new cultures, conduct
experiments and become part of a community of interest. In other
words, a virtual world can become a substitute for a hybrid form of
teaching. Some examples of virtual world implementation in an educa-
tional setting include: creating a virtual campus (De Lucia, Francese,
Passero & Tortora, 2009), learning a foreign language (Couto, 2010),
medical and health education (Boulos, Hetherington & Wheeler, 2007;
Boniolo & Spadaro, 2010).

Collaboration
To avoid confusion in their interpreteation and use, Dillenbourg,
Baker, Blaye & O'Malley (1995) refined the definitions of the terms
‘cooperation’ and ‘collaboration’. According to them, cooperation is a
hierarchical process of task division in which each individual is respon-
sible for all the activites he/she performs. On the other hand, collabo-
ration is heterarchical coordinated engagement of all participants that
are jointly solving the task. Given that collaboration is one of the main
characteristics of Web 2.0, and thus of all web applications that are
implemented in the area of e-education, the group of tools designed for
students’ collaborative work can be further subdivided into: note-taking
and editing, office applications, source code publishing, and creative
learning.

Note-taking and Editing Services

Web services for collaborative writing are a type of application designed
for synchronous work on the same document. Although collaborative
writing is one of the basic functions of wiki, there are plenty of web
services that have functionality nearly identical to that of a desktop
word processor. Tools for collaborative writing can be divided into two
categories. The first consists of services designed for note-taking in
hybrid teaching. Instead of recording the most important parts of lec-
tures on paper, students can use specialized tools such as SpringNote and
Helipad as an effective substitute. Since most of these tools have sharing
options, students can complement each others’ notes and thus create
light versions of educational materials. The second group consists of
text editors like Adobe Buzzword and iNetWord. Using collaborative edi-
tors, students can jointly work on essays, write project documentation
and participate in brainwriting sessions.

Office Applications
Due to their characteristics, office applications like Google Docs, Think-
Free and Zoho can serve as an alternative to commercial versions of
desktop applications. By using them it is possible to create effective
presentations, write and format text, create spreadsheets and graphs,
etc. Office applications allow students and teachers to synchronously
work on the same document, and to transport documents between
other web and desktop office applications.

Source Code Publishing

Collaborative programming is a common process of writing computer
code with the aim of developing a joint solution to a programming task.
There are several ways of implementing collaborative programming in a
hybrid course. Firstly, students can individually solve parts of the pro-
gramming task and then merge them into a coherent whole. In this
way, the work on complex projects that consist of hundreds or thou-
sands of lines of code can be facilitated. Secondly, students can publish
their solutions on specialized social networking sites like byteMyCode,
GitHub, Snipplr, or Snipt after which, upon taking into consideration
comments of teachers, other students or experts, who are users of such
sites, they can correct errors or improve the code to make it more effi-
cient. Finally, by publishing and commenting software code, students
can more easily understand programming concepts and learn from each
other.

Creative Learning
Creative learning applications aim to generate a stimulating learning
environment in which teaching activities facilitate the adoption of new
knowledge and the recall of existing knowledge. Furthermore, by using
these applications the students can present task solutions in an innova-
tive way. In addition to virtual worlds and games, this group of Web 2.0
applications includes web services that can be used in the educational
process regardless of the material that is taught. One of them is Bubblr,
the purpose of which is making photonovels (cartoon strips) that show
the solution of a task in a creative way.

Multimedia Sharing
Using multimedia in the educational process facilitates the adoption of
new content and helps in understanding complex concepts. There are
numerous web services that allow users to publish and distribute vari-
ous types of media. Students can use them as a source of external con-
tent for blog or wiki posts, as well as for their assignments, writing of
papers, or for merging them into a multimedia mashup. Web services
for media sharing can be subdivided into three different categories: (1)
photo, (2) audio and video, and (3) documents and presentation shar-
ing.

Photo Sharing
Web services designed for sharing photos represent a very important
resource since they enable students to store, search, organize and cate-
gorize a large number of photos in one location. The main representa-
tive of this group of tools is Flickr. One of its most interesting modules
is related to the functionality which enables commenting of images as a
whole or of their parts, which can be very useful if a teacher or a stu-
dent wants to highlight certain parts of the image. Flickr also allows
users to tag photos, which makes the task of browsing photos by where
they were photographed much easier. With the use of a photo album
for educational purposes, it is possible to obtain more detailed infor-
mation about a course topic and facilitate learning in other ways than
by using a traditional encyclopedia or a textbook. As an alternative to
Flickr, Photobucket can be used as another rich resource of categorized
photographs. In addition to the tools that are exclusively used for pho-
to sharing, it is also necessary to mention web services such as Splashup,
Aviary and Picnik, which contain a number of options for photo editing
and may serve as an alternative to commercial applications with the
same functionalities.

Audio and Video Sharing

There are many applications that are dedicated to sharing audio and
video. The most popular representatives are surely YouTube, Google Vid-
eo and Vimeo, where teachers can publish tutorials and recordings from
their lectures, and students can watch and download all video content
related to a course subject.

Documents and Presentation Sharing

Unlike the traditional learning management systems, where access to
the curriculum and lecture materials is only granted to teachers and
students from a specified university, web versions of document and
presentation management systems are either totally open to the entire
population of Internet users, or open only to arbitrary groups of users,
as designated by content owners. Moreover, their common purpose is
to make scientific, professional, and technical documents publicly avail-
able to a wider community of interest. Using this type of web service,
teachers can publish lecture presentations, assignments and their solu-
tions, online versions of textbooks, etc. Students have the ability to
search, browse, download and use large amounts of educational materi-
als. Popular document management services are Docstock and Scribd,
while Slideshare and Authorstream are used for presentation sharing.

Communication
Although communication is one of the three basic characteristics of
Web 2.0 applications, the module for synchronous interaction among
participants is not implemented in most of the previously mentioned
web services. Therefore, such communication among students or be-
tween the teacher and his/her students needs to be performed with
additional tools, most frequently via instant messaging (IM) applications.
Meebo represents an integration of different services for synchronous
communication and facilitates sharing of resources between users, re-
gardless of which instant messaging, social network or similar platform
they are using. Audio and video forums are web applications that serve as a
substitute for traditional forms of asynchronous communication via
text-based forums and email. The purpose remains the same: rather
than typing messages, participants can leave their comments in the
form of audio recordings. Popular representatives are Voxopop (audio
forum) and Voicethread (video forum), both of which can be used for
teaching and training of foreign languages. The last category consists of
tools for video conferencing such as Userplane and Vyew. This group of tools
is intended for supporting teamwork, as it can be used for discussions
and meetings, and serve as a place where all team members present the
achievements on the project so far.

Knowledge Organization
This group of Web 2.0 applications includes two subcategories: tools
for organization of information through visualization, and applications
used for manipulation of artifacts previously created by other applica-
tions (including Web 2.0 applications) into logically structured units.
Major representatives of graphic organizers are mind maps and
flowcharts. Similar to other applications in which the artifact can be
edited and improved by various participants, mind maps and flowcharts
created using Web 2.0 tools can be generated by individuals or teams
and shared online.
Mind maps are schematic views which enable the display of ideas,
knowledge, thinking, or problems in a specific way. Mind maps help
users to adopt, organize, and store information. They also assist in the
understanding of complex problems. In order to develop a mind map,
one has to place the main idea in its center. The main term then
branches out to the the concepts that are directly associated with it. The
procedure is repeated until we get a graphically and semantically struc-
tured entity. Popular representatives of this group of Web 2.0 applica-
tions are Bubbl.us, Mind 42, Mindmeister, Mindomo, and Wise Mapping.
A flowchart provides a better understanding of the structure of a prob-
lem through graphical presentation of its solution. It is commonly used
for processes and algorithm interpretation, and organization of collect-
ed information. Well-known tools for creating flowcharts are Creately,
Draw Anywhere, Gliffy, Lovely Charts, and Lucid Chart.
On the other hand, there are web applications that enable teachers and
students to logically organize artifacts (presentations, podcasts, etc.)
which can potentially be used as teaching and learning materials and
which were originally created with the aforementioned web services. In
this way, such artifacts can be maximally adapted to students’ learning
styles. The first representative is Slidesix, which allows users to create
rich presentations through a combination of slides and speech recorded
with a webcam or a microphone. By using this kind of online presenta-
tion, parts of lectures that are important but are not explicitly stated or
indicated on slides can be narratively explained. The web service Veotag,
which one can use to create navigation through audio or video pod-
casts, provides students with a detailed overview of a podcast with
relevant parts highlighted by tags. As a result, students can focus on the
parts they find important, rather than listen to or watch the entire pod-
cast. The teaching materials developed by this group of web services
can serve as replacement for e-books.

Artifacts Integration
Various artifacts that were created by students can be collected in a
single virtual space and presented on wiki pages, in blog posts or e-
portfolio views (Bubaš, Ćorić, & Orehovački, 2011b). For instance,
theoretical text, illustrations, video files, links to resources, as well as
other forms of online content can be organized into project reports or
collections of online material on broad topics and presented on
wiki/blog pages. In addition, students can use existing RSS feeds or
generate new ones from previously created artifacts, and integrate them
into one of the mashup services. Whereas the knowledge organization
tools in the previous category result in creation of standalone structured
units, the main purpose of artifacts integration as it is defined here is to
provide a user-generated repository of resources.

Conclusion
Implementation of Web 2.0 applications in the e-learning process has
led to significant changes in the creation, presentation and adoption of
educational content. Instead of passive memorization of information,
students are actively involved in creating instruction materials. With the
use of such applications, the teacher’s role has also changed. Instead of
merely generating course materials, presenting them, and evaluating
students’ work, teachers need to engage themselves in finding suffi-
ciently good and useful web services that will encourage students to
collaborate.
The taxonomy proposed in this chapter can serve as a framework for
the selection of Web 2.0 applications and the implementation of online
activities. However, this must be done while keeping in mind the edu-
cational context, the technical competence of students, and the course
goals. Our future work will focus on the development of educational
activities, strategies, and scenarios for most of the discussed categories
of Web 2.0 tools and services.

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 Authors

Tihomir Orehovački is a Teaching Assistant

at the Department of Theoretical and Ap-
plied Foundations of Information Sciences of
the Faculty of Organization and Informatics
in Varaždin, University of Zagreb, Croatia.
At the same institution, he is pursuing a PhD
degree in Information Sciences. Currently, he
is involved in teaching various courses in-
cluding Data Structures, Programming 1 & 2,
Design of Software Products, and Computer-
Mediated Communication. He has participat-
ed in several scientific projects that were financed by European and
national funds. He has also co-organized several workshops and a
webinar on the use of Web 2.0 applications in education. His research
is mainly focused on the quality in use of Web 2.0 applications, HCI,
web engineering, tools for teaching programming, generative pro-
gramming and security of web applications. He was the co-author of
paper that won the EUNIS Dørup E-learning Award 2011. He has
published over 40 scientific and professional papers in conference pro-
ceedings, refereed journals, and books.

Goran Bubaš is an Associate Professor at

the Department of Organization of the Fac-
ulty of Organization and Informatics in
Varaždin, University of Zagreb, Croatia. He
teaches courses at the undergraduate and
graduate level including Computer-Mediated
Communication and Selected Chapters in
Instructional Design and Mentoring in E-
learning. He has led several scientific and
technological projects related to e-learning
and online communication. He has also co-
authored the content of web portals and performed workshops, semi-
nars, videoconferences, webinars, and lectures for teachers interested in
e-learning. His latest research is related to the pedagogical and techno-
logical aspects of innovation in online education. He has published
more than 50 scientific papers in journals and conference proceedings.
 Andreja Kovačić is a Senior Lecturer at the
Department of Foreign Languages of the
Faculty of Organization and Informatics
Varaždin, University of Zagreb, Croatia,
where she teaches university and vocational
ESP courses. She is currently attending a
PhD program in Applied Linguistics at the
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities
and Social Sciences. As part of her profes-
sional development, she completed an online
course on using the Web in language teaching
delivered by the University of Oregon. Her recent research has focused
on the pedagogical use of Web 2.0 tools in foreign language instruction,
e-tivities design, and the role of L1 in foreign language classroom. The
publications she has authored or co-authored include professional and
scientific papers in conference proceedings and journals as well as
translations of non-fiction. She has been the leader of the Engwiki
project team, the winner of the 2008 EUNIS Dørup E-learning Award.