The technology education agency Becta has found the use of Web 2.0 technologies by 11-16-year olds to be high at home and extremely low at school, despite apparent benefits found by teachers quizzed about promoting the use of Web 2.0 technologies in school.

Net Benefits

Becta said the benefits of Web 2.0 in the classroom included:

• helping to encourage student engagement and increase participation – particularly among quieter pupils, who can use it to work collaboratively online, without the anxiety of having to raise questions in front of peers in class – or by enabling expression through less traditional media such as video;
• Teachers have reported that the use of social networking technology can encourage online discussion amongst students outside school;
• Web 2.0 can be available anytime, anywhere, which encourages some individuals to extend their learning through further investigation into topics that interest them;
• Pupils feel a sense of ownership and engagement when they publish their work online and this can encourage attention to detail and an overall improved quality of work. Some teachers reported using publication of work to encourage peer assessment.

More than half of 100 teachers surveyed would back the use of more Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom, Becta argued, with almost a third (29 per cent) admitting to already running blogs. Of the 2,600 learners in years 8 and 10 surveyed across 27 schools, 74 per cent have social networking accounts and 78 per cent have uploaded content such as photos or video clips from phones onto the web.

Becta’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications, Tony Richardson, said: "Some schools and individual teachers have been very innovative in developing their use of Web 2.0 to support learning. However, clearly teachers need the support, time and space to develop skills and practices that will allow them to integrate Web 2.0 into lessons. The report shows that the impact that Web 2.0 can have on the motivation and engagement of pupils. We need to ensure that these benefits are extended to all learners."

Collaborative Workers

The communications industry also supports the expansion of Web 2.0 usage in schools. Mark Hutchinson, Managing Director of communications services provider Telindus UK, said that collaborative tools were becoming increasingly prevalent in the workplace and businesses could benefit from school leavers with Web 2.0 skills.

“With Web 2.0 now commonplace in the lives of UK’s next generation of managers, businesses need to embrace the benefits of these collaborative tools in the workplace or risk missing out on one of the biggest communications and marketing channels currently available,” he told NMK.

“As long as employees use Web 2.0 applications responsibly and organisations manage their bandwidth appropriately, businesses can benefit from new and engaging ways of interacting with their staff, customers and suppliers as well as prospective employees and customers. Many media organisations have already grasped onto this fact, engaging their audiences with richer audio-visual and interactive content,” he said.

Hutchinson added that a survey of office workers conducted by Telindus revealed that 18 to 24-year olds are “Web 2.0 addicts”, with nearly 80 per cent of 18-24 year olds logging on to social networking websites and 58 per cent watching videos on YouTube during office hours.  39 per cent per of this age group would even consider leaving the company if office managers restricted personal internet usage at work.

Train to Gain

Another major provider of communications services to the education sector, ntl:Telewest Business, sees training and security as key obstacles before more Web 2.0 technologies can be taught successfully in schools.

“Many teachers are still in the dark when it comes to next generation applications and a fifth of teachers polled [by ntl:Telewest Business] felt that they lacked the knowledge and training to integrate Web 2.0 tools into their lessons,” warned Dave Alderson, Public Sector Specialist, ntl:Telewest Business.

“Web 2.0 has crept up on the school system as social networking sites, blogs and YouTube became a global phenomenon in a relatively short space of time. However, schools and colleges now need to meet the expectations of the digital generation. By providing the right training for teachers and having a Next Generation Network (NGN) to provide sufficient bandwidth and resilience to support media-rich applications, schools and colleges can deliver the collaborative, digital environment that today’s pupils would like to see,” Alderson concluded.