Web 2.0 – What it means to educators
Posted by achayefsky on March 21, 2007
I am completely enamored by the term Web 2.0, but it has been a process of hearing, observing, thinking, reflecting, understanding. I have heard people discuss with alarm how they will cope with the ‘new’ internet. I have heard people say they will not download it and finally at the annual MEC (Microcomputers in Education) Conference, held at ASU every Spring Break, I found a way to understand Web 2.0 that ignited my understanding and passion.
The Web as we have become familiar with it (internet, wide world web, www dot) was developed to share content. The content was fairly stagnant and one needed to know HTML code and have a server to post and to host content. Content (or information) was generally (and up until VERY recently) limited to those with skill and access. Users could only read it, not change it, comment on it, create their own response.
When I say content was stagnant, this is not a negative thing, it was the information available at the time of posting to a website. Stagnant content can be very useful and important information, some examples are encyclopedia’s or dictionaries that one typically uses for research. The information generally does not need to change frequently, so slow publication was not a bad thing. But now paper encycloedia’s are truly a thing of the past in homes and are relegated to libraries!
Suddenly, door-to-door encyclopedia salesman are a thing of the past, I could buy it in CD form, and later still, access limited editions for free on the internet. Even if I paid what seemed like ‘alot’ of money for disks or full downloadable versions, I would no longer be spending thousands of dollars on books that had some portions becoming obsolete even as they were being collated and stitched in the printers bindery. Hmm! Are you thinking about paperless (electronic) textbooks on handheld devices? Good for you! Now your thinking like a 21st century learner.
But back to 2.0! We educators (and students) became adept at accessing informtaion from the internet. Students are now expected to competently open their internet browsers in the computer lab and Google ‘Martin Luther King’, identify key points their teachers rubric helped direct them to and create a report, a powerpoint or some other form of learning assessment.
Web 2.0 pushes students, and their teachers, to interact with the data, to be part of a collaborative that creates or enhances that data. Web 2.0 is users (of any age or skill level) creating content. So just as a student is learning about Dr. Martin Luther King, so are they creating a podcast, a blog, a video. They are publishing their learning on the internet, they are creating viable content (still defined by the rubric provided by their teacher), they are showing evidence of understanding, they are living the content. Perhaps students are expressing and opinion, confirming facts, challenging a position, defending a position. Where might a teacher expect to see greater authentic learning?
- Copying (maybe paraphrasing) text from an internet encyclopedia?
– Creating a video or podcast about Dr. King with a small group of students?
Which would you prefer to grade?
Which would your class prefer to read/listen to/watch during oral reporting?
In a Web 2.0 mindset, students become responsible for their learning (and their outcome) with the support and guidance of their teachers. Their learning is hands-on and authentic. They are creating a real and publishable product which they could not produce if they do not know the material (add-in the language arts skills for all the self-editing and social choices and decisions that would accompany such an undertaking and you have quite a robust learning environment). Quite often students are working as a team toward a goal and are taking or sharing responsibilities, determining strengths within the group that should be exploited while learning and adapting to minimize and compensate for individual weaknesses, finding alternate routes around these issues. Students cannot easily negotiate these complex societal situations without the observant guidance of their teachers. These are all real-life, workplace skills that begin to prepare stduents for their adult roles.
Implementing Web 2.0 does not take years of tech training nor even a highly tech savvy teacher. It merely takes educators with and open mind for new twists on old themes and an ability to observe and guide students through a myriad of appropriate experiences as they reach their own results and conclusions. Most school aged students already possess the knowledge and skills to pick-up Web 2.0 activities quickly and easily, and in the case of blogs, may use this on a regular basis on community websites, instant and text messaging. They won’t need us to provide step-by-step procedural instructions. these things are more intuitive for them, than for us! It takes an ability for the teacher to see technology as simply a tool that enhances learning outcomes – never technology for technology’s sake – we do not always need one computer for one student, in fact, in some scenarios that will not be the best model. There are many models and many possibilities, best determined by the teacher, the project, the students. Above all, Web 2.0 is an attitude!
Did you know, classroom technology is not always a PC or a laptop!!!
Poll your students, who has a digital or a video camera they can bring to school for a project (cameras are technology). Who has a digital recorder they can bring in to make podcasts of an activity, the process, the teamwork, that the teacher uses as their assessment? (Podcasts and Digital Recorders are technology). Who has access to a computer at school or home and wants to manage the groups blog? (Blogging is technology). Who has a cell phone they can use to create a G-cast of learning and observations that take place outside of the classroom, in the evenings or on the weekends? Almost everyone!
A camera, a recorder, a cell phone instead of a computer?
Sometimes yes, and why not?
What are you already doing that needs just the slightest ‘tweak’ to update it to Web 2.0 and Integration for the 21st Century Learner? Do you put writing prompts on the board or to locate their own prompts on the internet? Perhaps you ask students to write a journal entry each week on ’something’? What if they take a picture and then have to write how it makes them feel or how it represents something you assigned them to take a picture of. Isn’t the student producing authentic writing? You bet they are! Are they engaged because THEY took the picture, and they interpreted your instructions through their photo or language choice? You bet they will be!
In the last IN Group Meeting, we discussed a math class where the teacher sent students outside with cameras to take pictures of the geometric patterns they could find on campus! When is a sink a trapezoid? Do you think they will remember that the stairs and the ground formed a triangle every time they see that spot? When they find a garbage can, take a picture of it, write about it and present it to the class as a cylinder, will they have an understanding of the three-dimensional qualities of a cylinder? Without a doubt!
Ouch! I have strayed from content collaboration as a hallmark of Web 2.0 and moved into engaging the 21st Century Learner – it is truly all intertwined. This is an amazing time to be a teacher! This is an amazing time for teachers to engage their students in their own learning, as never before! This is an amazing time when we can enable our students to become active participants in their own education, using what they consider every day social tools! using the ideas and tools and opporunities of Web 2.0 philosophy, we, as educators and parents, are beginning to speak to our stduents, our children, in their language, the language of today and THEIR future!
Let’s help them use their 21st Century Skills…
…to enhance their own learning!
