Web 2.0 in Education - A Survey

Conditions of the Survey

The survey was conducted within a workshop "Web 2.0 in Education" at the International Conference on Computers in School (POSKOLE) 2007, in Sedmihorky, Czech Republic, April 27, 2007. Participation in the survey was not obligatory; moreover, the workshop was scheduled to the last block, ending on Friday evening, just before the Conference finished.

Totally, 8 participants answered. 3 of them came from a university, 3 were secondary school teachers, 1 from the Ministry of Education, and finally the last one was a freelance journalist.
Some of the workshop participants did not answer because of the lack of time.

Results

Although the sample was small and non-representative, the results show, however, that Web 2.0 is finding its way to Czech primary and secondary schools relatively slowly.

Current Situation

The first question was Do you have preliminary experience with Web 2.0 services? If so, with which of them?. The responses included most frequently Google services (Docs & Spreadsheets, also Maps - totally 5 times), followed by YouTube (twice) a once del.icio.us, as well as Digg, Ajax13.com, and blogs.

Th services are equally frequently used in real life as in education (but rarely, 1 + 1 respondent), while one respondent uses them in both situations.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Maps, GMail, RSS technologies, and Podcasts belong to the most favorite ones.

SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Web 2.0 in education, according to the respondents, include availability at any place, huge potential, wide spectrum, continuous development, the fact that students use them, everything is outsourced and no installation needed, and finally, sharing.

The weaknesses are high hardware requirements, necessity of broadband connection, complete dependence on Internet (especially on its speed). Further, the weaknesses include complete dependence on someone else, advertisment everywhere, potential security threats, and lack of warranties. The usability in education is limited because teachers do not know the services.

Which opportunities have been observed? Web 2.0, in accordance with the participants, gives a chance not to be drowned in information overload, Web 2.0 is novel and natural for N-Generation, further - the educational resources can be shared, the education encompasses both pupils and teachers.

The threats contain: the services are not guaranteed, drowning in information; the services are demanding on teacher's preparation; there is a language barrier (the services mostly in English), and there is a risk of copyright infringement.

Perspectives

Further questions concerned experience from the workshop and, generally, opinions about applicability of Web 2.0 in education. The tools for clipping, clip-posting, and sharing (Clipmarks) gained the most interest. Also annotation services (Diigo) are considered interesting. The workshop extended the scope of many participants in terms of advanced Google Docs & Spreadsheets functionality (namely PDF export). The Google Calendar and SlideShare features were regarded as interesting, too.

The Google Docs & Spreadsheet (as MS Office and OpenOffice alternative) are seen as the most perspective in the short term, followed by Clipmarks and photo galleries. Google Groups was the only typical "social-networking" service. Outside of the school, just Google services (Calendar and D&S) are planned to be used, thus paradoxically narrower repertoire than in school.

'What is missing on Web 2.0 for education?' was another question giving the following answers: missing localization to Czech, necessity of broadband, missing services for schools and lack of topic search facilities or link bases.

Concerning the further education, the participants would welcome seminars, workshops, info about the progress, and popular articles in Czech, as well as more detailed familiarization with the services and lists of available learning objects.

Collected and processed by Tomáš Pitner, May 2, 2007