Thing #5 Perspectives on Web 2.0

There is no denying that things are changing and they are changing fast. Our schools are not excluded from these changes. Web 2.0 technologies are broadening the learning potential for ourselves and our students by allowing access to people, places, and experiences previously out of reach. This is an environment where learners participate in activities at there own level and eventually evolve into providers of information rather than just consumers. Learners in the Web 2.0 school have multiple teachers, not just the one standing in the front of the classroom but also a docent who is presenting live from the Alamo, or group of peers who are commenting on the same novel read in class through a blog, or a child in India demonstrating how to cook a meal via podcast. Our students are not just the learners, through the experience of collaboration and sharing their own knowledge they teach others and learn more.  

There are no limits to time, level, or depth of involvement. Talk about multiple intelligences.... Wow! Web 2.o really is for every type of learner. This does present challenges for the traditional classroom teacher. How do you manage such an environment, particularly in the elementary classroom where younger students or ESL students may not be proficient readers yet? Finding content on the appropriate reading and comprehension level is time consuming, multiply that by how ever many different learning styles/levels represented in one classroom. The process of locating, analyzing and evaluating potential sites has to be repeated for each concept taught within a school year. All of this is assuming that the teacher is confident with Web 2.0 herself/himself. 

If traditional schools are to evolve with Web 2.0 there has to be support, and lots of it for our teachers. There are too many risks involved in "stepping out there". But surely the benefits outweigh the costs; David Jakes gives a couple of those benefits in his article "New Literacies: Enrichment or Essential?", he concludes that our students will become content creators and by creating products such as blogs they will be better writers, who write more personally, expressively and collaboratively. Digital storytelling enables students to find their own voice, produce products of compelling value, visualize their writing, tell stories and ultimately learn more because the learning is personalized. 

It is not far fetched to imagine our classrooms without textbooks, papers or  pencils. The reality is that I didn't have televisions, computers or even calculators in my classroom when I was in elementary school and that was just 30 years ago! Who knows what advances the next 30 years will bring? Since Web 2.0 provides learning in ways extremely different from how we currently teach we need to accept that our jobs as teachers are going to undergo radical changes...... Teaching 2.0?