How can schools and school libraries respond to disruptive technologies?

[Ken Price]

Web 2.0 technologies are, in general, disruptive. That is, they disrupt the organisational models, the planning, the resource allocation, the power structures and the expectations that apply to school education.

How might we respond to this disruption?

Education systems have spent decades cultivating a model where schools provide ICT services (computers, networks, resource collections, online tools, storage space, etc) to students. When students suddently have no need to rely on schools for these services, the investment suddenly starts to look like a bad decision. What should we do? Insist that students only use the things we provide? Try in vain to mimic these services? Or change our assumption that schools should be responsible for providing the bulk of online services that students use?

It interests me that an increasing number of my teacher colleagues tell me that they encourage their students to use Wikipedia. Yet the bulk of this use seems to be using Wikipedia as a reference source. I have only met a few teachers who encourage students to use Wikipedia beyond this - to contribute their own content and participate in the construction of knowledge.

Seems that some of our response to Web2.0 is to treat it as Web1.0?

[Sue Johnston]

Hello - Web 2.0 seems to be so much a part of every day and our work now. But I take Ken's point - we need to be at level 2 not saying 2 and doing 1. Students are keen to be involved and using these tools and we need to be there with them - having a blog on our web sites, using social bookmarks to keep share good sites etc. I have been taking some steps in these areas with my students and some staff - we need to be where they want to be - even if it can be a bit daunting at times.
Looking forward to catching up with more of you during Online III
Cheers
Sue

[Ken Price]

Interesting thoughts Sue.

Your suggestion that we should be making use of these tools raises an issue. For years education systems and schools have been developing their own software for educational use. Web2.0 provides most of this from outside the school system.
Is there still a case for school systems to have to provide online tools, or has the freely available Web2.0 enviroment rendered all school-based applications meaningless?

If we accept the Web2.0 tools as providing most of what we need, are teachers and librarians in a position to recommend particular tools to students, or is that advice meaningless as well?

kp

[June Wall]

How we as teachers utilise this environment for learning rather than just catching the bandwagon for the sake of it is the real issue. I agree with Ken - many teachers believe they are using Web 2 but in reality use it as a tool to teach "school 1.0" - the usual problem of finding it difficult to move our teaching and learning into a different model based on learner needs and interests. I love the disruptive nature of the technology but does everyone like being put in a position that requires change all the time.

[Ken Price]

Thanks June,

Often when people are confronted with technological change, they tend to use new technology to do things the old way. I was told once that TV screens were made rectangular rather than square or the original circular design because people initially expected televisions to provide a "picture" in their room, and pictures were typically landscape paintings on the wall...that is, the new TV was initially seen as replacing the old framed landscapes on the wall.

I guess teacher-librarians have both the personal issue (how best to make use of Web2.0 tools for their own practice) and also the issue of how to encourage other staff. Given the many other things that create stress in teachers' professional lives, it is easy to appreciate that some will not want to pursue a new thing that could be confronting. Of course, it won't go away if they ignore it, but they might choose not to pay it much attention.

I sometimes wonder if a teacher who simply allows students to use these Web2.0 tools but does not provide any educational context is doing them a favour or not (I change my mind a lot on this question). In some ways, accepting that the teacher need not be an expert is a good move. But does this include allowing/encouraging undirected use of Web2.0 tools? Or can school librarians assist in providing that context for students whose teachers are not in a position to do so?

kp

[Kate]

Perhaps the question is whether we want them to learn the ends or the means - should there be structured use of Web2.0 tools first, to ensure that all students have an adequate comfort zone, before we let them loose to use the tools as they will to achieve a particular goal? Should the structure be in the form of group exploration, or peer-tutoring, or online self-directed modules? Is it important to ask students to reflect on how successful their approaches were in using various tools, or only to assess the end product?