Web 2.0: Technologies for Learning Key Stages 3 and 4

Web 2.0: Technologies for Learning Key Stages 3 and 4 Using Web 2.0 to Support Learning

Presentation outline • What is Web 2.0? • Research methodology • What evidence do we have on how Web 2.0 can support learning? • Statistical data: usage and impact • Vignettes from student focus groups • Vignettes from teacher interviews • Questions posed by the research

Defining Web 2.0: • Building and extending social networks • Engaging in participatory opportunities online • Sharing and making accessible creative products • Emphasising user-generated content • Consensus on definitions of Web 2.0 is difficult to achieve!

Aspects of the context…

Web 2.0 and Learning Provide insight into KS3 and KS4 learners’ own use of Web 2.0 technologies and how this compares to their experience in schools. • Is any formal or informal learning taking place? • Educational value for learning in and out of school? • What makes Web 2.0 motivating and engaging to young people?

Participating Schools 15 normative sample schools 12 (selected from 100 nominated) Web 2.0 innovating schools

Methodology • Surveys with more than 2,600 learners at 27 schools • Guided survey technique • Student focus groups at 25 schools (300+ students) • Approximately 150 interviews with head teachers, teachers and staff in the 27 schools • Surveys with 206 teachers from 22 of the 27 schools • Screen-capture telephone interviews with 30 Web 2.0 innovators • Telephone interviews with 10 RBC managers

Reporting structure • Report 1: The current landscape - opportunities, challenges and tensions (May 2008) • Report 2: Young people’s use of Web 2.0 (June 2008) • Report 3: Web 2.0 technologies for learning and teaching at Key Stages 3 and 4: benefits, barriers and issues (September 2008) • Report 4: E-safety issues in using Web 2.0 in education (September 2008) • Report 5: Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stage 3 and 4: summary report (September 2008)

Schools’ surveyed Web 2.0 activities

What technologies are students using out of school? • High levels of access to technology out of school • 93.2% have access to a mobile w/camera; 98.4% to a PC; 96.6% to the internet • 89.4% use email and/or instant messaging • 36.5% use a webcam; <20% use voice chat • 74% use social networking sites • 59% play online multi-user games

What do students think important to use more of in class?

Motivation and engagement • Interaction with existing social network • Free, easily accessible communication • Abundance of information • Little evidence of production and publication

Non-Use of Web 2.0 Out of School for Learning • Don’t see educational applications of tools • Communication preference • Barriers: Access • Barriers: Skills • “It’s just I don’t really know how to... they’ve taught us how to do it, but it’s not really a lot of detail.” (m, Y10, low, W9) • Reservations about audience • “…when you make – not MySpace – where you have friends... What’s the point in having a blog and telling some random person you’ve never met about your trip to the chip shop, and stuff like that… If it’s someone that you know, then I understand, because you might want to tell them but, if they’re someone you’ve never met before, why bother?” (f, Y8, high, W2)

Challenges to implementing Web 2.0 • E-Safety: filtering, behaviour management • “When we started the wiki, because a lot of pupils were logging onto it from school, it was blocked for a while, so that county could look into it and see what we were doing so we were allowed to use it. It’s almost as if they don’t trust us, they don’t trust our judgment in what the pupils can access.” (W4 Teacher, Welsh) • Access to resources • Dissemination of good practice • Changing attitudes towards pedagogy

The Teachers’ Perspective • 67.5% agree or strongly agree that their students “need more experience of collaborative learning” • 53.9% think “Web 2.0 resources could support more effective collaboration” (24.3% have no opinion!) • 45.2% think online bullying is currently a problem – 50% think this will worsen • 37.4% think “adopting Web 2.0 resources would be time-consuming for me”

Case study: W3 • High-performing urban comprehensive • Web 2.0 concentrated within ICT department • Most of Web 2.0 products open to internet • Use blogs to brainstorm for projects, video-conferences • “Emotions tree” wiki

Case study: W3 • SLT believes in importance of technology • Filtering done in-house • Ethos of whole-person development • Individual-driven innovation • Training largely personalised, ad-hoc

Case study: W3 • “He’s an innovator and we just give him space to innovate… it’s a very good project and it hasn’t been disseminated enough… when you actually see it happening… the interactions between the students from various parts of the world, you just go `Wow!’…” - W3 Deputy Head

Case study: W3 • “It makes you want to try it out when you get home.” (f, Y7, low user) • “It’s good to like share things with other people like in different countries if they don’t know about our cultures.” (f, Y7, low user) • “It’s all work. It’s not fun… because I don’t think anyone finds work fun, because if you found it fun then… you’d enjoy it more, like you’d see people saying ‘Yes! I’ve got ICT!’ but you don’t. It’s useful and it helps you with your education, but like when you’re at home…I’d rather be on MSN than go, than go onto Mr [X]’s…webpage. (m, Y10, unknown)

Questions generated by the research • How do we differentiate Web 2.0 tools from Web 2.0-style pedagogy - and when do we need this distinction? • Are individual innovators necessary to make Web 2.0 “work” in a school? • Can Web 2.0 exist within a walled garden? (Or, are VLE’s the death of Web 2.0?) • Do students want Web 2.0 in school? ….

Data sources on teachers and Web 2.0

Data from teachers • Approximately 150 semi-structured interviews with head teachers, teachers and other staff in 27 schools • An online survey (n = 206 teacher responses at 22 schools) • Online multimedia interviews with 18 teacher ‘innovators’

Some themes emerging from the data (i) • Changing nature of teachers’ work (re-skilling, intensification, time) • Blurring of distinctions (eg home/school; work/not work; formal/informal learning) • Teacher receptiveness to innovation

Some themes emerging from the data (ii) • Perception of, and attitude to, ‘risk’ • Perception of affordances and pedagogical opportunity • Perception of and response to ‘contradictions’ (eg collaboration and assessment; innovation and performativity) • Contextuality (school, local authority, Regional Broadband Consortium etc)

Awareness of importance “There’s got to be a motivation for [channelling enthusiasm for Web2 in school]… as teenagers they are spending a huge amount of time developing their social lives and developing their niche within their peer group... but can we replace that motive within school for school activities with something as energetic as their own social lives? I just don’t know how they’re going to balance home and school really…” N1 Teacher (ICT/Art/Tech)

Use of social networking tools ‘Initially when I start sharing my Facebook and my Bebo pages and addresses and they find you there’s a lot of - I guess - kudos to be someone who’s commented on Mr [ ]’s page: ‘I went on his page and I said this’... But I have been surprised that that they’re almost limited in the things they’ve got to talk about to me. So…the common ground we share is that I teach them maths or I teach them ICT…’ (W2 Teacher Hi 6)

Use of social networking tools “I set up a Facebook [account] and I was interested in it for about three weeks. It’s too high maintenance, I haven’t got the time. I really only want to use it to share photos with friends and family for events… I read a really interesting article about somebody who felt the same and committed what they called ‘Facebook suicide’ which is deleting their account and I thought ‘yeah that’s exactly what I want to do!’ It’s too much maintenance.” (W2 Teacher, Hi, 10)

Use of a wiki “…one of the first exercises that [the class] did was to compile a wiki - I put some rules on about you must run around in the class and you’vegotto chew and spill drink on the keyboards and they were all aghast at this, and I said ‘Well, you can change it if you like’. I showed them how to change a wiki and after 17 iterations we’d got a set of class rules that I couldn’t have bettered myself. So there was that community built up around the wiki… they all felt that they had a choice in what they said and did and that they were able to affect those around them by helping make the rules.” (W2 ICT teacher, 8)

Use of blogs “…what the blog allows me to do is to embed videos, so that when they click on it they view the video inside the blog… and what I’m liking is that Year Elevens are feeling more empowered in that they’re actually making comments on the things I put on there, and its becoming a dialogue between yourself and the students and as a result of that they feel… more ownership over their own learning…” (W2 geog Teacher, 5)

Use of online games “Our head of [department]… will play an online, shooting game… against students, and the kids love it, the kids love the fact that they can go home and shoot up their head of [department], and in terms of his relationship teaching them, it’s brilliant to have those connections – it’s really quite exciting.” (W2 Teacher Hi 6)

Use of online games “… you’re in that kind of world, and you have battles against dragons and God knows what in that kind of virtual environment, [and] this member of staff got upset that some children had in some way or other ganged up on him. Now, in this game – nothing to do with school at all – …the point I’m making is, that member of staff had exposed himself to a serious potential problem… and I said, ‘Just go away and deal with it yourself, you shouldn’t be putting yourself in this situation… no more than you’d go round and visit them in their ‘den’…’” (W2 ICT Coordinator 5)

Use of forums “Year 10, two years ago, were doing Hitchcock and there were almost six hundred postings from a class of thirty students… In class inevitably you don’t get everybody contributing. With this every single student contributed. Secondly what was fascinating was that the conversations that would occur in the forum wouldn’t occur in a classroom… So it produced a level playing field. Thirdly it provided anytime anywhere access – they were contributing after midnight because it suited their rhythms or they had just thought of something. Then fourthly, the dynamic – it could go off in all directions. I made a post about the morality of directing a film. Well that was off – there were 300 posts on that and we set that up as a separate thread…” (Deputy Hd W2 10)

Use of forums ‘…it comes down to that risk factor [as seen by] the member of staff who’s leading it, because people say ‘Ooh, isn’t that risky, because they could post…’ [and] sometimes, yes, things like that will happen, but [in] the majority of cases, they won’t, and the pupils, generally speaking… will use it responsibly and will appreciate it… but it is a big risk for some staff and some staff just absorb that and don’t worry, whereas I think others will panic all the time…’ (Ass’t Head, W2, 1)

Speed of change “…the kids are moving… quicker than the education structure… the kids can adapt and move a lot quicker than schools… we’ll be getting there eventually… I’m worried that in five years time we launch a VLE with social networking and… the kids have all moved on to something else…” NS Teacher (ICT, High user)

Some questions emerging from the teacher data… • Are individual innovators necessary to make Web 2.0 ‘work’ in a school? • Can uptake of Web 2.0 possibilities get beyond ‘innovators’ and ‘early adopters’ into the ‘majority’? • Does Web 2.0 herald the possibility of significant pedagogical change among teachers, or are certain pedagogic ‘dispositions’ a precondition for Web 2.0 adoption? • What should we be doing in initial teacher education?

Web 2.0: Technologies for Learning Key Stages 3 and 4 Contact: charles.crook@nottingham.ac.uk colin.harrison@nottingham.ac.uk

Web 2.0: Technologies for Learning Key Stages 3 and 4