Web 2.0 and What it Means for Education

My head is swirling at lighting speed with information I am reading via blogs and wikis or listening via podcasts. The idea that we are in the middle of this great change comparable to the invention of the Gutenberg press with all its consequences is simply fascinating to me. What all of this means for the educational field is even more mind-boggling. I am trying to explain this change to teacher colleagues and I will need to find a

Here are some of the things that I have picked up on this subject and that I need to organize in my head and find a way to see them connected. What better way than to use the blog for this process. I will just start out with a brainstorm of buzzwords and ideas that need to be categorized in my mind and see if I will be able to come up with some sort of coherent way that would explain this phenomenon (read/write web) to educators and administrators and use it as an opportunity to help educate digital immigrants about the needs of digital natives in the 21st century.

I will cite all the sources of where I heard or read these concepts as best as I can. Since I have listen to hundreds of podcasts in the last month and read an equal amount of blogs, I am having some difficulty remember where I heard of this concept or keyword first. This post is a compilation of concepts in posts and podcasts that made sense to me what web 2.0 can mean for education.

From podcast Episode #65 Connect Learning with David Warlick:

• Students need role models.
• Changing Literacy Skills : How to you read a blog? How do you write in a wiki? Students need to be taught how to act in this new online environment.
• Don’t block sites like MySpace. Teach them how to use them appropriately.
• Students need role models to know how to blog in MySpace
• Information landscape has changed
• How do you read/write in mySpace
• Who will teach literacy?
• Keeper of knowledge has changed (institution vs individuals)

From Web 2.0 Summit in Southeast Texas Podcast # 68

• Difference between web 2.0 and 1.0
• Dynamic and real time
• Multilevel technology integration that will help 21st century students
• Forming communities and all connected to learn together

Web 2.0

• Conversation- Collaboration- Community of Learners
• What should kids be learning today that was not important to learn 20 years ago:
• Working in teams, being able to collaborate and agree to take parts in a project.
• Have to learn collaboration
• Need to learn to create/ construct their own knowledge, because when the students enter the workforce, we can’t even envision what they need to enter the workforce. What kind of jobs will be out there?
• Students will need to be able to adapt and continuously learning.
• Every worker needs to be a life-long learner.
• Need to teach the students how to teach themselves!
• Prepare kids to a constantly changing world
• World with resources like Wikipedia
• Need to learn to think critically and evaluate the information they receive.
• Before: We assumed the information we received was true.
• Need to learn if information is relevant, which source it comes from.
• There is so much information is out there to search through to what they actually need.
• Teachers are no longer the gatekeepers, since the wall are gone. Students become their own gatekeepers
• Literacy skills
• All the things what it meant before
• Plus much more

Ideas to incorporate web 2.0 technologies

• Cooperative group projects
• Find evidence that what they read is true and find references to add to entries to Wikipedia
• Teacher is more a facilitator.
• Lectures won’t go away, but students will do the lecturing
• Teacher is creating and cultivating a learning experience

Filed in: langwitches web2.0 teaching education read.write.web