A study by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) reveals that though U.S. school districts recognize the importance of web 2.0 tools, not many districts are fully embracing nor implementing them.

James Bosco, EdD, Principal Investigator of the MacArthur Foundation grant and Co-Chair of CoSN’s International Advisory Council [stated], “If U.S. students are to be the next inventors, entrepreneurs and leaders in the global economy, we must see to it that our young people have the innovative tools they need to be successful in the 21st century, particularly in the classroom.”

OK, this blog understands that–not a revelation.

The study collected data from nearly 1,200 school administrators on the role of digital media in American schools. CoSN worked with the Metiri Group, which conducted the survey of three key groups of education administrators — school district superintendents, curriculum directors and technology officers.

Here are their key findings (my comments in italics):

 

• The nation’s district administrators are overwhelmingly positive about the impact of Web 2.0 on students’ lives and their education. (Good to hear.)
• Keeping students interested and engaged in school is the top priority for Web 2.0 in American schools.  (I’m still with you.)
• The majority of district administrators believe that student use of Web 2.0 should be limited to participation on approved educational Web sites. (Well, that would depend on what those are. If you’re excluding all social media, this is where I take an out.)
• The majority of school districts ban social networking and chat rooms while allowing prescribed educational use for most of the other Web 2.0 tools. (Hmmm. This needs to be defined clearly. I can envision an assignment in which I want my students to collaborate with students from another continent, and this would be prohibited because we can’t use Ning or Twitter. Close monitoring is the key here. If the school cannot be confident in its ability to monitor whom students are contacting or what the students are doing, then maybe it’s not ready for implementation. However, that would raise other questions about why the school cannot properly monitor its students online activities.)
• While curriculum directors report low levels of general use of Web 2.0, they describe significant opportunities in curricula and teaching materials. (Anywhere there is internet access there is an “opportunity.”)
• Curriculum directors reported that Web 2.0 will be used most effectively in social studies, writing, science, and reading at all grade levels. (Why not math? Why NOT math? Art? Music? PE? Any subject? The opportunities for collaboration and networking are endless.)
• The use of these tools in American classrooms remains the province of individual pioneering classrooms. (Why?)
• Web 2.0 is outpacing the capacity of K-12 education to innovate. (I’m sure that’s true.)
• District administrators, the persons responsible for the decision-making on Web 2.0 in schools, are more passive than active users in the Web 2.0 space. (That may be an understatement. The probable fact is that most school administrators are not utilizing web 2.0 tools so how could they be expected to fully understand their massive utility?)

…

“From Facebook and other social networking applications to wikis, blogs and digital media, children in the United States are fully engaged in the use of Web 2.0 tools outside of the classroom. The study is encouraging since it shows that school leaders believe that Web 2.0 collaborative applications expand the resources available for classroom learning, but it also reveals that use of these technologies inside the classroom is often constrained by a number of factors.” said Keith R. Krueger, CEO of CoSN. “Our schools must better align the reality of the technology-rich world in which our students live outside of school with the learning experiences they have in the classroom each day.”

Nothing to add there. Amen.

U.S. schools need to get serious about promoting and implementing new learning tools and a new mindset geared toward collaboration and networking on a global scale, or they will get left behind.

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It seems clear that the best type of education centers on information discovery and processing, making connections, and collaboration and community. I read an informative piece by Will Richardson about the importance of building community as a precursor to the introduction of new learning tools. That is, unless I understand how to best use the tools within the context of a personal learning network, my understanding and internalization of concepts will not be as deep. Richardson:

It’s difficult to understand the impact that online learning networks and communities can bring (and their potential downsides) without being a part of them.

We need to do personally what we expect our students to do in the classroom; proper modeling cannot be underestimated. How will I inspire my students to do classroom blogs unless I cannot point them to the joy and fulfillment I find in blogging? How can I encourage them to collaborate if I cannot demonstrate how I collaborate in a variety of media? Richardson continues:

As Linda Darling-Hammond suggests, “…teachers need to learn the way other professionals do—continually, collaboratively, and on the job.”

Yet, I suspect that some of us educators are standing pat and not extending ourselves in this way.

Our continued emphasis on tools in pd misses that larger point, obviously, because the power of the Read/Write web is not the ability to publish; it’s the ability to connect. Broken record, I know, but tools are easy; connections are hard.

Image by D’Arcy Norman