Thing #5

I believe that Web 2.0 is a misleading term but, one we are stuck with.  I think that a better term would be Community 2.0.  To me, the word Web conveys a space for information, for knowledge but, not necessarily creativity and community (even if those were some of the intentions of Mr. Berners-Lee when he came up with the World Wide Web) where ‘community’ embraces everything that Web 2.0 has come to represent.  Web 1.0 was a collection of simplistic sites full of information and ideas, where Web 2.0 brought things to life with a variety of coding and presentation options, giving rise to creativity and the ability to share ideas in ways that capture and inspire others’ imaginations.

Extending this idea to teaching, it is awe-inspiring how many options we have to convey information to our students. In 50 Web 2.0 Tools Every Teacher Should Know About a slideshow by Jane Hart lists a stock of amazing resources which cover almost every way to convey information to people via the Internet that can be imagined.  And not only do teacher have friends in this list but, there are resources to make learning easy on the students too.  I wrote previously on how blogs could be created by students to instill a sense of community.  In this list I came across Kidblog, a site designed to help get students started blogging in a safe way.  Additionally, tools like Google Scholar provide a simple way to connect students with legitimate sources to help prepare them for writing papers as professionals.

All of the tools here are great, and amazing extensions of the learning process but, do not say much about the state of “School 2.0.” Since the foundation of public schools, the way we do things has constantly been in a state of change.  This is not a bad thing but, I fear that it may be causing us to lose perspective when lost in the great landscape of Web 2.0.  A great number of people post opinions that school will soon become entirely based in the Web, learning “from the cloud.” However, this is a dangerous idea in my opinion because I can only see it going in one of two directions.

First, and scariest, is that learning will become a free-form, unguided excursion into the internet.  This is not to say that I fear students having curiosity and initiative (indeed the world would be a better place if our schools could do more to nurture those feelings).  Instead, I fear that students (without a grounded knowledge in fact and research) will be led astray and learn things which are simply wrong (which is a frighteningly real possibility in a world where the internet allows anyone to post any thought, however true or false, that they wish).

The second option, which may be worse, is that learning will become a stream-lined process.  This may sound like a good thing, standardizing education across the board and giving everyone the same opportunities but, at what cost?  It is well-known that students need different things but, how will the internet know that?  Education is enough of a challenge for educators to tailor to individuals, let alone computers.  And worse, this education would corrupt the very nature of Web 2.0.  The “new” Internet is based on creativity and ideas.  To give students such pre-packaged learning is to say that education (and indeed knowledge) is only a bland set of principles to be memorized and forgotten between cute pictures of cats and comments on blogs.

Instead, we need a middle ground.  We need our classrooms, with teachers who guide knowledge and introduce tools and concepts.  School 2.0 needs to be a program that yes, encourages students to explore and learn on their own and in their own ways but, also provides an anchor, a base to question the knowledge and provide truth which can be difficult to discern against the landscape of opinion.