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In the Literature

Page history last edited by Ashwini Datt 13 years, 5 months ago

Web 2.0

A loose collection of 'second generation' web-based technologies and services, many of which are designed to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users (O'Reilly, 2005 cited in Kennedy et. al, 2007). Emerging technologies of particular relevance to education are in the areas of communication, publication and collaboration (file sharing).

 

Are the students of today big users of Web 2.0 technologies?

 

Commentators like Prensky, McCrindle, Philip, Barnes, Marateo & Ferris assume that today's students:

 

  • expect technology to be an important part of their education
  • expect immediate answers and fast access to information
  • are assertive information seekers
  • adept at multitasking (also seen as having short attention spans)

 

“After all, we’ve been around the block. These wacky kids, they’re just getting started. They have the tools, but lack the wisdom to use them effectively. It’s up to us to teach them how. But first, we’ve got learn how to use them. That done, we can transform education, and transform their enormous capacity to learn.” View presentation by Mark Pesce http://www.viddler.com/explore/mpesce/videos/14/ or get the text version http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=56
 

 

Marc Prensky talks about digital natives and digital immigrants http://sisomo.com/interviews/Marc-Prensky.htm 

According to Prensky (2001), there is a widening gap between today's university students (digital natives) and their teachers (digital immigrants) so lecturers need to tailor their teaching to match the skills, experiences and expectations of these students. See his latest article http://www.edutopia.org/ikid-digital-learner-technology-2008

 

However, a group of researchers from The University of Melbourne, Charles Sturt University and University of Wollongong claim that the net generation (also known as digital natives and generation y-born between 1980-1994) are not big users of web 2.0 technologies http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/kennedy.pdf. Their study found a great diversity in the frequency of the use of technologies; the use of web 2.0 technologies for collaboration and self publishing being lower than expected. The limitation here is that the study has been carried out on first year university students only.

 

Pedagogy 2.0

Socio-constructivist theory underpins the use of social software in education. The conventional principles of social constructivist learning such as effective learning being conversational in nature makes communication, dialogue and shared activities an important part of learning. This furthers the opportunities for inquiry based and collaborative learning. Similarly, learner centred pedagogies can also be supported with the use of social software because read-write-edit-publish ability of such software enable user/learners to easily generate content that reflects authentic learning, enables peer reviewing and activates scaffolding or mentoring by an educator/mentor.

 

Collaboration and cooperation encourages active participation among learners and enables a community of practice between educators/academics/practitioners. By sharing and publishing the content with the wider audience, learners become reflective practitioners and through feedback and reviews from peers learn to appropriate new ideas and build confidence in transforming their ideas into published work. This enables personal meaning making through learner self-direction.

 

 

Educational applications-few examples 

 

  1. Piloting social networking and Web 2.0 software at Deakin

 

Because a content/learning management system "does not support read-write-edit-publish features of Web 2.0" technologies and "inhibits collaborative interactions of communities" that include students, staff and others (Samarawickrema, 2007, p. 904). The staff involved in the project saw the potential of web 2.0 software in:

  • working across timezones
  • contributing and editing like the whiteboard
  • creating communities of practice with learners and professionals both in an out of their institution
  • developing a PBL environment
  • providing learners their own space to collaboratively build knowledge
  • providing formative peer feedback mechanism
  • reducing the presence of lecturers
  • overcoming restrictions of content/learning management systems-using plugins like Joomla, sharing work like Gallery2 and research method for case study like Mediawiki

 

Some of the major challenges that these innovators faced were:

  • getting learners to collaborate-the activities had to be integrated into formal assessment to get enough participation
  • time commitment-overseeing and managing group work and even monitoring online activities were very time consuming
  • lack of institutional support for changes within the curriculum to accommodate the new methods
  • resolving concerns around legalities of sharing course content openly and making Deakin material/brand public 

 

  1. Some local examples

Blogs and wikis used by students and staff at UNITEC http://ltxserver.unitec.ac.nz/mediawiki/index.php/Teaching%26Learning_with_Technology_Examples

 

Wikis used by teachers and students in UNITEC http://howiusewikis.wikispaces.com/

 

Wikieducator contributions from Otago Polytech http://www.wikieducator.org/Otago_Polytechnic#Featured_works

 

References 

Barnes, K., Marateo, R. C., & Ferris, S. P. (2007). Teaching and learning with the net generation. Innovate, 3 (4).

Kennedy, G., Dalgarno, B., Gray, K., Judd, T., Waycott, J., Bennett, S., Maton, K., Krause, K.L., Bishop, A., Chang, R. & Churchward A. (2007). The net generation are not big users of Web 2.0 technologies: Preliminary findings. In ICT: Providing choices for learners and learning. Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/kennedy.pdf 

McCrindle, M. (2006). New Generations at Work: Attracting, Recruiting, Retraining & Training Generation Y: McCrindle Research.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9 (5).

Philip, D. (2007). The knowledge building paradigm: A model of learning for Net Generation students. Innovate, 3 (5).

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