As part of my reflection for EDER 679.09 I wanted to emphasize what I felt was most important to me. One of the significant issues that came to the surface with working on this project was how would I be able to use Web 2.0 tools in my classroom. Would I be able to? The whole range of Web 2.0 tools available to teachers and students is staggering. What I have outlined below is a guide to implementing Web 2.0 in the classroom, as well as maybe providing some advice as to how to approach teaching students who are tech-savvy but may still need some practical guidance in navigating the waters of the Internet. This guide is meant to be a companion piece to the article that Karena Munroe wrote called  A Message to My Students

A Practical Guide to Implementation of Web 2.0 in the Classroom

The current educational model is out of date with the times we live in. The model we are working with is based on an institutional framework that hasn’t changed drastically since the Industrial Revolution. Admittedly, there is more technology integration now than in the past. However, there are still some educators not on board with technology integration in the classroom.

In many schools and districts, there are teachers who are pushing for greater technology integration into the classroom. If you look at the skills that are emphasized in the new knowledge economy, schools may not be preparing students the best that they could be for this future. The pace of change in the technology related fields is surpassing the education system’s ability to deal with this change. Rather than reform the educational system, it needs to be transformed. This may be a little idealistic, but I am very much a pragmatist at heart.

If we’re not preparing our students for the world that is out there beyond our classroom walls, it is in part because we’re not teaching them the basic skills that they would need to deal with the new knowledge economy. Many of our students are “digital natives”, and many of their teachers are “digital immigrants”. These terms were coined by Marc Prensky in his article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”(2001). What Prensky was discussing was the idea that today’s students had changed incrementally from those in the past in that, “They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Today’s average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV). Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives” (Prensky, 2001). Prensky goes on to further distinguish between the “digital natives” and the “digital immigrants” by clarifying the key differences between the two groups. According to Prensky, “digital natives” are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access, like hypertext. They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work (Does any of this sound familiar?).

But “digital immigrants” typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that the Natives have acquired and perfected through years of interaction and practice. These skills are almost totally foreign to the Immigrants, who themselves learned, and so choose to teach, slowly, step-by-step, one thing at a time, individually, and above all, seriously (Prensky, 2001). The people sitting in our classes grew up on the “twitch speed” of video games and MTV. They are used to the instantaneity of hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets, a library on their laptops, beamed messages and instant messaging. They’ve been networked most or all of their lives. They have little patience for lectures, step-by-step logic, and “tell-test” instruction. Digital immigrants need to address the reality of the students sitting in their classes, and attempt to address their learning needs and styles. We need a few things to change in the education system in order to get educators up to pace with their students. Students and teachers will need to do the following in order to be more competitive in their future endeavors. All of that I will outline here in this practical guide to implementation.

More teachers need to become comfortable with using and integrating technology and to that end teachers need effective professional development.

Educators need more guidance in how to integrate technology in their classroom teaching practice. Many times teachers aren’t aware of the tools and applications that they have access to, most of which are free. For example, many teachers don’t know a lot about Web 2.0 tools, many don’t know what a blog is, or a wiki, or what podcasting involves. Once they are exposed to these ideas at a PD conference, some may actually apply them to their teaching practice. But for the most part, school boards are not fulfilling this need for training their teaching staff. Teachers are left to their own devices. Many who have an interest in learning more about Web 2.0 have to seek out that knowledge on their own time. This is something that needs to change. Teachers need access to professional development workshops where they can receive training in the tools that their students are already using. This needs to be cheap and accessible PD (preferably free). This PD could be provided by the school board itself, or through our unions or specialist councils, or through other organizations or social networks. There is also the Google Teacher model in which you receive your training to become a Google Certified Teacher with the catch being that you must lead PD sessions in your district. There is also the possibility of social networking PD through in the use of Web 2.0 tools through online communities such as Ning or Classroom 2.0. More importantly, perhaps, in all of this professional development is the development of social networks amongst teachers who are like-minded individuals who are genuinely interested in the integration of technology in the classroom. These social networks could help teachers solve their own problems in implementation and use of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom by providing them an outlet for collaborative problem solving with their peers. An example of this can be seen in the Classroom 2.0 website where teachers who have become members of the community are able to post queries on the site and then are able to tap into the collective intelligence and expertise of all of the members of the Classroom 2.0 site.

Students need lessons in digital information literacy.

Never, in its short history, has the Internet offered so much potential for the classroom teacher. The digitization and sharing of our collective intelligence and knowledge began years ago, and it continues to grow at an amazing pace, while also expanding the available resources from just text and pictures to video and audio with the Internet’s expansion of bandwidth and power. In addition, the ability for users to create content, collaborate, social network and communicate is unprecedented with the expansion of the usage of Web 2.0 tools and related technologies. With billions of websites and dozens of new potential tools being developed each year, all of this can be overwhelming for the classroom teacher, for school administrators and for school districts as well.

One of the most critical skills our students are going to need in the coming years involves digital information literacy. As teachers, we are suffering from information overload. Where does that leave our students? Students have unprecedented access to information. As I have said to my students in my classes, “the world is literally at your fingertips”. What are we doing to teach them how to navigate through this sea of information? Students need to be taught the skills to navigate this massive network of content and be able to analyze it, evaluate it, and do something with it. While this has always been part of the educational model, the scale and level at which 21^st century learners are expected to do this has increased exponentially. At the same time, with the democratization of the Web, just about anyone has the ability to publish his or her take on any topic or issue. This is certainly a whole new ball game.

I think the starting point is teaching students to critically examine each online source for point of view. What is the background of the author? Under what conditions was the text written? What did the author hope to accomplish? By looking at these questions, students can place the information in context and hopefully recognize any biases represented. I have found some of the information at the Media Awareness website useful in this regards.

In addition to teaching students to recognize points of view, we also must have resources that we can trust. In this vast sea of information, numerous news organizations, educational institutions, museums, and educators have created islands of reliable information. Like textbooks, some websites are universally accepted and can be used without the intense scrutiny that blogs and wikis demand. I think that one of the reasons for this trust in these forms of information on the Internet is the style in which the information is created. In the case of blogs, many blogs are opinion based, which for many people throws the legitimacy of the information into question. In the case of wikis, the fact that they can be edited by anyone can call in to question their accuracy in some people’s minds. To this I would say, doesn’t that open their usage up to discussion and debate about their credibility and usage in the classroom, and in turn, as sources of information? This is part of what we would like students to do, examine issues critically from multiple perspectives, wouldn’t this be something that could be discussed and debated as a class? 

Teachers must have tools that will allow them to easily bring Internet resources into the classroom.

For this, I’m not talking strictly about only the hardware tools, but also the software and other applications to make their teaching lives easier. As educators, we need greater access and ability to tap into the tools that are outside of our classroom walls. We need to be able to use Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. Web 2.0 is not simply a buzzword, it is a set of tools and technologies that allows users to collaborate, remix and modify content, to social network, and most importantly create new content. Web 2.0 has the potential to have a great impact socially, politically, culturally and intellectually than on our world. Many schools and school districts do not allow their teachers to use these tools for various reasons. In some cases, certain Web 2.0 tools are blocked or filtered by the system’s security measures. Many districts and schools block access to YouTube for example. If you look at the issue from a school administrator or board of trustee’s point of view, you can maybe understand some of the issues related to Web 2.0 that might make their integration in the classroom problematic. Most often the reasons cited for blocking their usage is related to security of the school computer network issues and liability issues. Is this an insurmountable obstacle? I don’t think so. Possibly all that school boards might have to do is revisit and rework their acceptable usage policies for the Web 2.0 age. 

Students need to develop skills that have a great deal of transferability.

In Thomas L. Friedman’s book The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21^st Century he states that “we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet” (Friedman, 2005). How can we as educators prepare our students to navigate through a future that is totally unknown to all of us? The solution could be: adopting a new twist on an old idea put forth by John Dewey. Dewey believed that we shouldn’t be educating children for specific jobs; rather, we should be educating children for life.  Way back then, Dewey could see that educators could not predict what sort of work or life awaits learners.  Back then, things moved relatively slow.  Now we have “exponential times”, with new knowledge and information being created every year. There are certain skills that would be applicable to the new knowledge economy, that future employers would be looking for. Obviously, routine problem-solving skills will be necessary, analytical reasoning, communication skills, having a willingness to experiment, being team players, and demonstrating passion and leadership in what they are doing. With the new knowledge economy, there will also be a need to have flexibility in their skills, and they must have a willingness to retrain and acquire new skills.

Students need to be taught about copyright in the digital age.

      Today’s students need to be informed about issues surrounding copyright and intellectual property. For many students, they feel that the information, pictures and videos that are on the Internet are fair game, that they can take them and manipulate them as they see fit. Some websites encourage this sort of mash-up mentality (for example, Yahoo’s JumpCut). Students in general, need to be educated and informed about how they manipulate digital information and content. Students should also be introduced to the Creative Commons, where they can make their work part of the public domain for all to use. The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to legally build upon and share. The Creative Commons website enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information (http://www.hawthornemedia.com/resources/glossarya-e.htm). In a recent article for the Journal of Online Education, Harold Pitler encourages educators to make use of the Creative Commons website since it allows authors, artists, and musicians to select specific rights to reserve and to make it clear what uses and modifications they will allow (Pitler, 2006).

            As educators we have to help build the new playbook. Most teachers working today are most definitely “digital immigrants”, and as such we may feel collectively that we don’t have anything to teach the generation of students who seem so tech-savvy, but in reality, they really, really need you. For centuries we have had to teach students how to seek out information, now we have to teach them how to sort from an overabundance of information. We've spent the last ten years teaching students how to protect themselves from inappropriate content, now we have to teach them to create appropriate content. They may be "digital natives," but their knowledge is surface level, and they desperately need training in real thinking skills. More than any other generation, they live lives that are largely separated from the adults around them, talking and texting on cell phones, and connecting online. We may be afraid to enter that world, but enter it we must, for they often swim in uncharted waters without the benefit of adult guidance. To do so we may need to change our conceptions of teaching, and better now than later (Hargadon, 2008).

Friedman, Thomas L. (2006). The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.

Hargadon, Steve (2008). Web 2.0 is the Future of Education retrieved on July 20, 2008 from the Internet: http://www.stevehargadon.com/2008/03/web-20-is-future-of-education.html

Hawthorne Media (2008). Creative Commons entry retrieved on July 20, 2008 from the Internet: http://www.hawthornemedia.com/resources/glossarya-e.htm

Prensky, Marc (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon (NCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001)