Munteanu Roxana, Cuza Vodă High School Huși-Romania

USING WEB 2.0 TOOLS TO ENGAGE LEARNERS 

Web 2.0 tools are free digital programs that can be used for creating and sharing student-generated projects and products. They are interactive, multi-purpose, easy-to-use digital platforms that encourage students to collaborate with each other or create and share individualized response products.

Web 2.0 tools provide engaging ways students can interact with, and most importantly, learn from course material. They are particularly helpful when aligned to teaching and assessment exercises meant to increase student engagement, require students to summarize information, or verbalize insight into their conceptual understanding through means other than traditional writing exercises.

Web 2.0 tools also provide students an opportunity to interact with others as they share their knowledge. Students can collaborate with classmates to create response products, or they can share completed products with peers in their class, students in other sections, or other learners around the world. Web 2.0 tools create opportunities for students to share what they are learning with a wider audience.

What are Web 2.0 tools?

Web 2.0 tools can very broadly be defined as end-user applications that require dynamic interaction, social networking, or user interfacing between people and information. They almost always have accompanying websites and associated apps for smart devices. In a Web 2.0 environment users decide how they want to use, interact with, and create information. This contrasts with earlier Web 1.0 environments where one simply read static information on the Web (Morrison & Lowther, 2005).

In addition, users have the ability to generate and manipulate content from multiple locations in a Web 2.0 environment. Users can add images, videos, or links to other media content. Students have unlimited opportunities to individualize the content they embed in their products, and the ease of use of these tools encourages student creativity. Unlike traditional pen and paper type responses, students are not limited by their own artistic abilities, page-length, or word count limits. Students will often go beyond the basic expectations of an assignment because these tools facilitate students’ creative processes.

Familiar examples of Web 2.0 sites and tools include wikis and blogs (PBworks and WordPress), social networking sites (Facebook and Twitter), image and video hosting sites (Flicker and YouTube), and applications to generate Web content for education, business, and social purposes (Wikipedia, Weebly, and Instagram). It is important for teachers to remember that the magic is not necessarily in the tool itself; teachers must first consider their objectives for the lesson as well as the purpose of the student response project. The right tool can help students synthesize their learning, engage more deeply with the content of a lesson, and interact with other learners in more meaningful ways than traditional response projects or assignments.

Benefits of Web 2.0 tools

One of the benefits of Web 2.0 tools is their ease of use. Most students find these tools to be intuitive and user-friendly. Because of this, there is little time wasted in learning how to use the programs. The tools facilitate interactive learning and innovative responses to assignments and assessments. Students see their ideas take shape quickly, and they are rewarded with professional-looking results. It is also easy to edit the projects as they are being developed so students tend to take more risks during the creative process. This ease of use combined with the quality of the finished products increases students’ self-efficacy, and it motivates students to engage more earnestly and actively in the content of their responses.

Web 2.0 tools also can facilitate authentic interactions with content and with other learners. These tools offer students opportunities to solve real-world problems and to collaborate in meaningful ways with peers in face-to-face or online classrooms. Students have the freedom to customize their responses using multimedia or multiple modalities. Unlike a term paper or more traditional response project, no two projects look exactly alike. Students’ individual interpretations and representations of their conceptual understandings can easily be shared with others, thus increasing the learning opportunities for all.

Choosing and using a tool with students

The right Web 2.0 tool for the task is the one that matches the objectives of the lesson. The tool should not just be an “add-on,” but rather it should be a natural extension of the lesson that reinforces the skills or concepts taught. What do you want students to learn or to be able to do as a result of the lesson or unit of study, and what tool will help you achieve that goal?

There are a couple of useful websites that describe a variety of tools according to instructional purposes. One such website is http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/. Another is http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/Finding+the+Right+Tool These websites are organized by the types of tools, such as presentation drawing, video sharing tools, etc., and they provide links to the websites for different tools. Most tools can be adapted for a myriad of instructional or assessment purposes and subject areas. Five examples of specific tools, their applications, and sample student projects are provided below.