Web 2.0 is not the Future of Education

In response to http://injenuity.com/archives/207#comment-1109

Jen,

An interesting conversation. I have to say I found your initial post provoking; however, I understand where you are coming from.

Our District Motto is "Keeping Learners at the Centre."

I don't know that Web2.0 is the right catch all but I will work within that category. I believe students today are different than even 10 years ago. If we want to keep them at the centre, we need to change as they and society changes. I do a lot of professional development workshops and get quite annoyed being asked to teach a software title. I reflect back to the requester to tell tell me what their learning goals are and ask how this will integrate to the curriculum.

A quote from Brigham Young University that I just love is "The goal of teaching is to teach our students to be learners. The content is what they practice with. "

With the world changing in ways such as a online community being compared to being a country with its size and other features. Students are different and have opportunities to learn differently. A few years back (probably 10 now) Bernajean Porter worked with our Ministry of Education to define technology use in three ways - Literacy - Adaptive and Transformative.

At some point we all need the literacy level (skills), then we can move to doing what we already do (PPT) to doing things not possible before. Transformative is where I want to see most of the time spent. Voice Thread was an example discussed earlier. If we just record ourselves that is just literacy, if we use it to practice a speech that might be adaptive, but if we use it to , that could have been done before . Using Voice Thread for a global (or local) conversation with voice, text, files, annotations was not possible.

Students and Teachers don't need to learn every Web2.0 application; however, we do need to prepare students to learn and use the tools that they will need throughout their life. (I actually don't use Voice Thread myself but I can see the potential.) I love working with wikispaces.com. It doesn't matter if you use Wikispaces or PB Wiki or any other tool. What I am teaching is becoming creators of information and publishing to a limited (or global audience.) I would hope that spending time learning to write with a wiki would transfer to other wikis, blogs, voice threads, and even podcasts.

I love using technology. I see so much potential. I totally agree that learning should be central.

I question where the balance is between "I am teaching them to learn so technology is a lower priority" and "I am teaching them to learn with technology"
Kevin