Web 2.0 - playground or classroom?

Note: This post is in response to Week 6 Module 6 Blog 3

Web 2.0 or the read/write web is firmly entrenched in the lives of our students. Many teenagers can be seen documenting their lives online and view it almost as an extension of the playground – conversations via social media continue those started in person, pictures from events are shared and commented on, and anecdotes and opinions are recorded as snippets of information on anything from what’s for breakfast to global news.

How then do we take advantage of this for the classroom? The first thing is to accept it isn’t going to go away. We must work to break down barriers in both mindset and curriculum and work to integrate these aspects of student life into the classroom (Hao & Lee, 2015). There are a myriad of tools which can be used for collaborative activities which can engage students and encourage them to share and store information. Focusing on the positives of Web 2.0 technology such as:

• the ease with which students can create and present work
• communication and collaboration with other students and their teachers
• the wealth of knowledge available
• the connections both within and outside the school

will help students to become responsible, critical users of the digital environment (Jones & Mitchell, 2015).

There are many tools we can use to implement Web 2.0 in the classroom. From general blogs (e.g. www.blogger.com) and wikis (e.g. which can be used for information storage and dissemination to more structured ideas like Webquests. Webquests are an inquiry oriented lesson where the information required is found on the internet. They have been around since before the introduction of Web 2.0 and there is research around them supporting inquiry based learning and cross-curricular integration, even in secondary school situations where each subject tends to sit in a "silo" (Virtue, Wilson, & Ingram, 2009). More recently, the concept has been expanded to include more Web 2.0 features, including blogs, wikis, the use of RSS and communications applications such as Skype (Lin & Ward, 2013). Students both search for information and create communities to collaborate as they work.

In mathematics specifically, tools such as Geogebra can also be used by students to work together and create resources which can then be used to teach fellow students concepts, deepening their own understanding of concepts.

The internet is with us – could you go back to living without it?

References

Hao, Y., & Lee, K. S. (2015). Teachers’ concern about integrating Web 2.0 technologies and its relationship with teacher characteristics. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 1-8. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.028

Jones, L. M., & Mitchell, K. J. (2015). Defining and measuring youth digital citizenship. New Media & Society, 18(9), 2063-2079. doi:10.1177/1461444815577797

Lin, L.-M. G., & Ward, C. L. (2013). The integration of Web2Quest technology into multicultural curriculum in teacher education: a potential for globalization Curriculum, Learning, and Teaching Advancements in Online Education (pp. 46-60): IGI Global.

Virtue, D. C., Wilson, J. L., & Ingram, N. (2009). In overcoming obstacles to curriculum integration, L.E.S.S. Can be more! Middle School Journal, 40(3), 4-11.