E-learning and web generations: towards web 3.0 and e-learning 3.0

It is widely accepted that the WWW has evolved consistently over the years. Early Web tools were simple, but as information technology and internet speeds evolved, new tools would emerge, creating an interactive, user-centered space where information is shared among all. The next generation of the Web, the Web 3.0, will aim primarily at organizing it through intelligent agents and semantic standards. At the same time, one of the earliest and most popular uses of the Web, e-Learning, is also changing. Thus, much as the Web changed from a “read-only” medium, to “read write” and to “read-write-collaborate”, so have the concept and methods of e Learning changed from a simple transposition of educational material to online support, to entirely new approaches to education, centered on student’s active participation, interaction and collaboration. Web 3.0 will further emphasize this revolutionary approach, potentially leading to virtual spaces of collaborative knowledge centered on active learning, student-centered applications, 3D visualization and intelligent agents based on semantic machines to permit students easy, intuitive access to information. By taking note of the parallels between the evolution of the Web and of e-Learning, we can make predictions of how future changes in the Web will eventually bring about changes in e-Learning systems