Jennifer_Champagne_Web20

As a current classroom teacher (and one day, hopefully, an administrator), I think that the use of Web 2.0 tools will greatly benefit our students, and should be utilized. However, there are restrictions that currently keep teachers from using them in their classrooms. I believe that the largest impediment is lack of support from the school division. One point that is often brought up is the fact many Web 2.0 tools are blocked on school computers. I think the deeper root of the issue is the lack of knowledge and use about Web 2.0 tools from the leaders of Richmond City Schools. The Technology Action Plan from the Virginia Department of Education, published earlier this year, states that “The challenge for educators is to help students identify and use tools to express themselves more effectively and creatively and accomplish work that would be difficult, or even impossible, to do without technology.” This challenge simply cannot be met if the school division does not recognize the importance of these tools, and provide teachers access to them. Until these limitations are removed, it will be very difficult for teachers to fully open up their classrooms to these types of collaborative tools. I agree with the quote from the INNOVATE article that far too often, classrooms do “reward individual knowledge stored in the head, not distributed knowledge”. As a teacher, I find that one of the best ways a student can display understanding of a particular skill is when they can share their personal knowledge with a classmate, and help them to understand it as well. Web 2.0 tools give teachers the opportunity to help students express themselves in just this way. This can be done through a tool like PowerPoint, which is available on all school computers. Students can collaborate while working on a particular skill, and then share their presentations with classmates. By adding pictures and videos to their presentations, students can interact with the topic they are learning about in a more dynamic and meaningful way. Another tool that allows students to go beyond these more simplistic presentations is Prezi. Here, students can make more lively slides that are bound to capture the attention of anyone who views them. Such presentations could be posted on the school website so that people outside the school could view them as well. As I am an elementary school teacher, I do have some concerns about students being safe on the Internet. I believe, however, by using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom, teachers can take the opportunity to demonstrate and share guidelines for appropriate use. By giving our students meaningful experiences with technology, we will help prepare them for the future, where more and more jobs will need to utilize knowledge of technology.