While K-12 district administrators are “overwhelmingly positive” about the value of Web 2.0 in schools, the use of Web 2.0 tools in actual learning environments is “quite limited,” according to the results of a new study from the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), a professional association for district technology leaders.
The report, “Leadership for Web 2.0 in Education: Promise and Reality,” compiled data from about 1,200 schools, polling superintendents, technology directors, and curriculum directors on policy issues related to the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in districts around the country.
Positive Influences
The report revealed several key findings related to administrators’ attitudes toward and experience with Web 2.0 and policies related to the use of certain forms of these technologies. One of the more significant and surprising of these revelations was, as mentioned, that administrators were overwhelmingly positive about the ways in which Web 2.0 can be of benefit to students in their academic endeavors. And, further, there was agreement on this across the administrator groups studied.
Although 56 percent of administrators said Web 2.0 tools have not been integrated into their schools’ curricula, more than three-fourths agreed that Web 2.0 holds promise for teaching and learning.
Administrators were asked about the impact or influence of Web 2.0 technologies on students. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) indicated a positive or highly positive influence on communications skills, with only 14 percent saying Web 2.0′s influence was negative or highly negative. And another 73 percent indicated a positive or highly positive influence on quality of schoolwork (11 percent negative). Seventy percent said Web 2.0 has a positive or highly positive impact on students’ outside interests (12 percent negative), and 67 percent said it has a positive or highly positive impact on interest in school (16 percent negative).
“We’ve come to believe that kids are learning in significantly different ways because of digital media, because of the ways they can participate, they can produce, the ways that they can share information, and the ways that they can create new information,” said Connie Yowell, director of education at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which funded the study. She, along with several other stakeholders in the study, spoke to reporters at a CoSN press conference last week. “We’ve also come to understand that learning for young people is distributed and that, just as kids have always learned outside of school, we’re learning that [with the] digital tools, they’re much more connected in their learning, that … if they have a cell phone with them, they have a learning tool with them. And so we think of learning as a 24/7 experience for young people.”
