Tuesday 28 July 2009

Students are not big users of Web 2.0 technologies

I've just read this article by Gregor Kennedy et al., which suggests that the new generation of students is less interested in Web 2.0 technologies than teachers imagine them to be. It reports on a research study conducted among a large number of students in Australia, which concludes:

- There is greater diversity in frequency of use of technology than many commentators have suggested.

- The use of collaborative and self-publishing Web 2.0 technologies that have often been associated with this generation is quite low.

"The net generation are not big users of Web 2.0 technologies: Preliminary findings", ASCILITE 2007 Conference, Singapore:

http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/kennedy.pdf

Interesting - comments?

Graham Davies

5 comments:

Great Food Places said...

Hello

Web 2.0 is the latest technology in IT world. Professionals are more in use of this technology as compared to students.If you want that the students must aware about this, give them practical knowledge rather than theoretical.

Thanks from spanisch lernen spanien

Graham Davies said...

I wouldn't say that Web 2.0 is the "latest technology". The term Web 2.0 was coined in 2004 by a Tim O'Reilly, but what we now call Web 2.0 applications were available some time before 2004. Web 2.0 was merely an extension of the Web in the way that its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, forecast back in the 1990s, i.e. "a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information" (Tim Berners-Lee: 1998).

See Section 2.1 of Module 1.5 at the ICT4LT site, which refers to Tim Berners-Lee and the emergence of Web 2.0 applications, as well as giving a list of examples of Web 2.0 tools that language teachers have found useful:

http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod1-5.htm#WEB2

Students tend to use a limited range of Web 2.0 applications, e.g. Facebook and Fickr, for social networking but probably don't perceive them as having educational uses. Many teachers, however, are making extensive use of such tools. Just take a look at Twitter, for example. Twitter is full of links to Web 2.0 tools used by teachers.

Graham Davies

Unknown said...

Graham I agree...They use so many social network sites.. and they all are in web 2.0..They are in blogging too.

they use some education portals and networks..But you right that if you compare then the average is low for them. :)

Tina Vacanze di studio Cork

CTEL exam said...

Web 2.0 is the latest technology in the IT world.Only IT professionals or IT students are using this technologies.

Graham Davies said...

CTEL exam said...
"Web 2.0 is the latest technology in the IT world.Only IT professionals or IT students are using this technologies."

No, this is simply not true. I just got back from the EUROCALL 2009 conference in Spain. It is quite clear from the papers that were presented that language teachers and language teachers are regular users of Web 2.0 applications and have been using such applications ever since the term Web 2.0 was coined in 2004. Web 2.0 is definitely not confined to IT people.

See, for example, the following blogs that are written by secondary school language teachers:

José Picardo's blog
http://www.boxoftricks.net

Joe Dale's blog
http://joedale.typepad.com

Graham