Web 2.0 in the classroom...

After engaging with a range of Web 2.0 technologies, I have now realised that many would be beneficial to use within most subjects of the primary curriculum, especially literacy. Web 2.0 technologies are applications that can be created and edited by users of the Internet (Stone, 2011). There is an argument, which is similar to the one I made in my first post, that in order to equip children with the skills they need for the future, primary settings must embrace new technologies further (Stone, 2011). Nearly one third of pupils in key stage 2 already access social networking sites at home (Clark and Dugdale 2009), highlighting that for some, there is a difference between ICT use in school and at home. The challenge for myself, and other educators, is to know how to best utilise web-based technologies for educational purposes (Beauchamp, 2012).

I thought the Storybird website would be a great resource for children and teachers to create stories. These stories could be made to suit the class, for example using children’s names. This would engage and motivate pupils; giving them the enthusiasm to make progress (Joliffe, Waugh and Carss, 2012; and Winch and Holliday, 2010). Storytelling is a means for students to create a narrative account of real or imagined events and Web 2.0 provides great communication tools which are able to support modern storytelling in a more efficient way (Ohler, 2013). They allow pupils to be creative in telling their story through words, pictures, animation, video and sometimes audio. Web 2.0 technology is a great tool for enhancing and distributing the story; engaging and motivating pupils (Beauchamp, 2012; and Ohler, 2013).

Word clouds could be used as a tool for word analysis and self-assessment (Stone, 2011). Because repeated words are larger than others, it is an ideal way of showing pupils their limited range of vocabulary. Unfortunately, some of the most common high frequency words, such as 'the' and 'it' are not taken into account and therefore the technology has limitations if these words are a particular issue for pupils (Fienberg, online). But it would still make an excellent resource for pupils to use to self-assess and improve writing (Stone, 2011).

Within the seminar, the issue of copyright related to the engagement of Web 2.0 technologies was brought to my attention. An example is that when uploading pictures onto Web 2.0 technology, such as Jigzone, children will need to be made aware of copyright laws (Kamel-Boulos, Marambaand and Wheeler, 2006).  A way to overcome this issue is to incorporate the importance of respecting copyright laws into lessons so pupils have a better understanding of where they can acquire picture from, also a Web 2.0 technology, such as ‘Dropbox’, could be used to store and share photos (DfE, 2013; and Beauchamp, 2012).   

There are many Web 2.0 tools that can arguably enhance classroom lessons and engage pupils, the ones discussed are just a mere few. Technology is ever-changing and I will have to look out for future developments in Web 2.0 technologies to support my future practice.  

Resources:

Dropbox- https://www.dropbox.com/

Word clouds-  http://www.wordle.net/

Storybird- http://storybird.com/

Jigzone- http://www.jigzone.com/

Bibliography:

Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary School. From Pedagogy to Practice. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd.

Clark, C. and Dugdale, G. (2009) Young People's Writing: Attitudes, behaviour and the role of technology. Available at: http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/research/nlt_research/261_young_peoples_writing_attitudes_behaviour_and_the_role_of_technology (accessed: 04/02/2014).

DfE. (2013) The National Curriculum. In Scholastic (Ed.) The National Curriculum in England: Handbook for Primary Teachers Key stages 1 & 2. Oxfordshire. Scholastic.

Feinberg, J. (online) Wordle. Available at: http://www.wordle.net/ (accessed: 05/02/2014).

Joliffe, W., Waugh, D., and Carss, A. (2012) Teaching Systematic Synthetic Phonics in Primary Schools. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Kamel-Boulos, M. Marambaand, I. and Wheeler, S. (2006). Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education. BMC Medical Education. 41 (6), Pp 1 - 8.

Ohler, J. (2013) Digital Storytelling in the Classroom. London: SAGE Publications.

Stone, G. (2011) ‘WWW: Wikis, word clouds and web collaboration to support primary literacy’, English 4-11 (41) pp. 8-11.

Winch, G., and Holliday, M. (2010) In Winch, G., Johnston, R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L. and Holliday, M. (Eds) Literacy: Reading, Writing and Children's Literature. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.