18. Social Networks in Education The important role Web 2.0 will play in education Presented to Dougherty County Board of Education Presenter: Quatrissia Johnson Consultant for the Board’s School Improvement Plan [email_address] Summer Retreat 2010, Albany, Georgia May 17, 2010
We’ve been waiting a long time for computers to dramatically change education, but for the most part, that promise remains unfulfilled. Unlike in the business world, where the computer quickly became a fixture on every desk and transformed both day-to-day tasks and the business landscape as a whole, computers have not transformed the goals of educators, or even the methods used to achieve those goals.
Intuitively, though, we have felt that the computer would bring real change, and the fact that it hasn’t has puzzled many of us. The advent of the Internet, however, and in particular what we are calling
“Web 2.0”, has so significantly changed our relationship to information and our own personal learning opportunities outside of formal education, that we’re beginning to see a set of software tools emerge that are profoundly altering both learning processes and outcomes. These tools allow us to see that start of a radical evolution in education that will bring such dramatic changes that we’ll soon be at a point where we won’t be able to imagine education without them.
What makes this coming transformation both so fascinating and so compellingly logical is the way in which the Web has changed our personal learning opportunities.
Good morning and welcome to the Dougherty County Board of Education Summer retreat. As you’re well aware, pressure from high stakes testing and from the necessity for improving our educational system- including the public school within it- is weighing heavily upon us more than ever today. Consequently, educators have a great need to use innovative educational technology tools to help increase student achievement while guiding our children into the 21st century. I submit to you that Web 2.0 technologies will provide those tools.
What is Web 2.0? The term “Web 2.0” is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with each other as contributors to the website’s content, in contrast to websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies
Dozens of Web 2.0 technologies have sprouted up over the years. A few of the most famous are Google, Twitter and Wikipedia to name a few. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia collaboratively authored and edited by millions of users.
The concept of utilizing Web 2.0 in K-12 classrooms is relatively new. Hence, limited research exists today on the effectiveness of using such technology in K-12 education. Current studies, do, however, demonstrate how the concept of Web 2.0 is based on the constructivist theory of education. The main tenet of constructivism is that learners construct their own knowledge, thereby, making connections leading to deeper understanding. This hands-on approach places the learner in the center of a developmentally appropriate and instructor-facilitated learning framework. This framework allows for active learning through synthesis, explanation and problem-solving, in addition to the systematic investigation of topics
Are you still asking yourselves “Why use a Web 2.0 in a K-12 classroom?” Innovative teachers—in our State and around the globe—who are using Web 2.0 successfully in their own classrooms provide these compelling reasons why…
Web 2.0 technologies allow for authentic instruction where students generate and apply knowledge to create genuine products for genuine audiences. Web 2.0 can complement a teacher’s approach to using various instructional strategies to differentiate instruction for diverse learners. Web 2.0 technologies are vehicles for cooperative learning through group interactions. Web 2.0 can support problem-based learning when designed to help students answer questions or solve real problems. The database nature of Web 2.0 technologies will facilitate the categorical and chronological archiving of student products, thus, facilitating the tracking of student academic growth.
At the elementary level, 3rd and 4th grade students at Bellaire Primary School in Australia created a wiki that allows students around the world to collaboratively extend the never-ending adventures of Terry the Tennis Ball. David Conley, an English teacher at Estancia High School in California, uses his classroom wiki as the organizational and knowledge-generation epicenter of his class—by posting assignments, projects, artifacts, rubrics, and student resources. The possibilities are endless!
As you’ve seen, Web 2.0 technologies are easy to support and don’t require additional software or hardware beyond a computer with Internet access. Our Dougherty County schools are able to accommodate Web 2.0 technologies in their classrooms. It’s acknowledged, however, that the biggest obstacle to adoption of Web 2.0 in our K-12 classrooms is security. Recent headlines about the potential dangers of Web 2.0 technologies have school administrators—understandably—on guard. How do we protect our students from unwanted access and from their access to inappropriate websites? Can we guard against accidental erasures of student artifacts? Is it possible to detect and regulate offensive conduct or plagiarism on the part of the students? The answer to each one of those questions is “Yes.” The best way to handle security concerns is through careful investigation into safe, secure educational sites that: protect certain pages from unwanted changes; allow for security settings that follow school and district; and, have no advertisements that could link our students to inappropriate content. As of 2008, there are many Web 2.0 technologies that offer secure and advertising-free sites for classroom use by educators free of charge. My comprehensive review of Web 2.0 technologies leads me to believe that it is the best option for our Dougherty County teachers
All the elements for implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in our classrooms are in place. Also, the education market right now is in a period of disruptive change driven by several forces: current district budgets are suffering from a national financial crisis; open source and Web 2.0 technologies are putting planning and assessment tools directly in teachers’ hands; advances in technology are making textbook markets obsolete; and, content for knowledge-generation is increasingly being found online through the Internet. It is prime time the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in our public schools
But, Web 2.0 technologies —are fairly new innovations based on a concept. So, you’ll find they haven’t generated widespread adoption and diffusion data, compared to that of other innovations such as iPods or laptop computers. In addition, Web 2.0 adoption has primarily been intra-organizational rather that trans-societal. Does that pose a problem for Dougherty County schools? A problem? No. An opportunity? Yes.
As our organization considers Web 2.0 adoption, Jim Bosco, Project Director of the MacArthur Foundation—will be there to help us build an effective adoption strategy. Using formula from Stuart Mader’s podcast, 21 Days of Wiki Adoption, we’ll be able to:
maximize the influence of our change agents—those technology leaders and lead innovators in each school who enjoy the challenges of new learning tools; entice the laggards—those teachers who don’t see the need to change what they think is working or those who are afraid of new technologies—toward adoption using knowledge of the relative advantage and low complexity of educational wikis; and, reach critical mass, which would mean between 10-20% of teachers using Web 2.0 technologies in the district.
The change called for will, no doubt, be disruptive. Fortunately, our Dougherty County School District has been pretty progressive when it comes to advances in educational technology. We’ve received many accolades for our innovativeness. But, as we face the growing use of Web 2.0 technologies by our students in an even more technologically advanced 21st century— with Web 2.0 technologies, consider the following scenario…
Organization “A” is an incrementalist. In normal times, it will prevail through a steady series of improvements in products and processes. Organization “B” is an innovator. In normal times, B’s position is really risky but it’s the safer place to be during transformative change. What does the Dougherty County School District want to be during disruption? An “A” trying to hold steady by doing more of what has always worked, or, a “B” who’s already where the tide of change is flowing?
Without a doubt, the School District of Dougherty County is up for the challenge.
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