Harnessing New Technologies

The World Wide Web is a completely different place as to when the National Curriculum (1999) was published.  As McManus (2005) describes; Web 1.0 was predominantly read-only whilst Web 2.0 can be categorised as ‘read-and-write’.  These ‘participatory’ and ‘collaborative’ (Lankshear and Knobel, 2011) technologies such as blogs, social networks, wikis and media sharing platforms have become immensely popular in today’s culture.  Greenhow, Robelia and Hughes (2009) see great promise as well as challenges in these emergent technologies for transforming education practice.

Our practical session for this week focused on Web 2.0 technologies and new social digital literacy practices.  I particularly enjoyed using ‘Jigzone’, ‘Tagxedo’ and ‘StoryBird’, as well as focusing on blogs in this module; I can see practical uses for all of these in classroom.  However, becoming digitally literate is not just about exploring new emergent technologies but with creating with them and understanding the creativity opportunities that lie within them (FutureLab, 2010).  These new technologies, such as blogging, are indicative of real world participation.  In my research on Web 2.0 and social digital literacy I stumbled up an interesting concept in the shape of Quad Blogging (Mitchell, 2010).  The main concept of this idea is to get four schools in partnership; while one school would be the focus and publish their blog post, the other three schools leave comments and begin a collaborative discussion between schools.  Not only do the children have real participants to interact with; it gives children a real purpose to engage with this concept while still being in a safe and guarded environment; where the teachers can act as moderators to monitor posts.  This advantage of blogging can be harnessed by teachers to take advantage of ‘Web 2.0 communicative opportunities’ (Crook, 2012: 77).

It has been observed that young people are readily engaged by these technologies, it might be expected that Web 2.0 communication would be eagerly adopted into educational practice.  However, Crook (2012) states that many teachers have been hesitant in harnessing these new technologies to engage learners in the classroom.  Merchant (2009) echoes these concerns as teachers are used to the safe and methodical space for literacy teaching in classrooms where they feel in control.  Being away from the comfy confines of their classroom in the big World Wide Web is an understandable experience; however, if teachers can harness new technology and create a positive environment for the children, like Quad Blogging, both teachers and children alike can flourish in developing their digital literacy confidence.

References

Crook, C. (2012) The ‘digital native’ in context: tensions associated with importing Web 2.0 practices into the school setting’. Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 38 (1), pp.63-80

Greenhow, Robelia and Hughes (2009) ‘Web 2.0 and Classroom Research: What Path Should We Take Now?’. Educational Researcher

FutureLab. (2010) Digital Literacy across the Curriculum (online) http://www2.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/handbooks/digital_literacy.pdf (accessed 06/07/14)

Lankshear, C & Knobel, M. (2011) New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning 3^rd edition. Open University Press

McManus (2005) ‘Web 2.0 is not about version numbers or betas’. Read/WriteWeb. (online) http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_20_is_not_a.php (accessed 06/07/14)

Merchant, G. (2009) ‘Literacy in virtual worlds’. Journal of Research in Reading, Vol. 32 (1), pp.38-56

Mitchell, D. (2010) Real Wider Audiences for Pupils. (online) http://mrmitchell.heathfieldcps.net/2010/12/10/quad-blogging-an-idea-now-a-reality/ (accessed 06/07/14)