ESHA Magazine April 2012.pdf

WILL ‘WEB 2.0’ LEAD TO ‘TEACHING 2.0’
For students, it means that learning will become a group process and
every individual contributes to the final result. Together, students create
knowledge and not just consume information. So, will it change the
way we teach? Let’s look at an example. Mrs. A teaches geography.
She has prepared her lesson and at the end, she asks her students to
prepare a report on Italy. The students go home, search the internet,
cut and paste and prepare a report. Mrs. A grades the work and the
learning goals were met.
Now the social media way. Mrs A. has prepared her lesson. However,
this time, she does not focus on details, but she focuses on some
inspiring stuff. She then asks the students to form groups of 4 to
5 students. She asks the groups to build a “Wiki site” about Italy. This
time, the students will jointly prepare a plan, divide the work, post their
part on the Wiki site and jointly finish the site. Mrs A can still judge the
individual contributions
The main benefits are that students will learn from each other and be
motivated by their co-students. They need to act because their work
will be visible to the world. In this process, the teacher, Mrs A will be
a learning coach.
I realize that most of the readers of the ESHA Magazine know about
social media. You probably use it yourself. However, you may need
to convince your colleagues to do the same. We need to give your
colleagues the most powerful tools available. The list of social media
tools helps you to inspire young students and empower teachers.
The important thing to remember is that this isn’t about providing you
with these sites. It’s much more important to ask, ‘What will you do
with these sites? The ICT section of the ESHA portal < weblink includes
a number of useful teacher communities. These communities include
contributions of teachers and school heads and may very well be an
interesting starting point for you, or your colleagues. ■
40 ESHA MAGAZINE APRIL 2012