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Leadership and Learning with Web 2.0

I just finished my final Masters coursework paper for the year. As a blogger, I frequently struggle with adjusting back and forth between my casual blogger’s if-you-feel-it-write-it approach and the academic vet-everything-before-you-even-think-about-it approach. It’s frustrating when you finish a post only to realise that you’ve made an ordinarily accessible topic overly academic, just as it is when you’ve completely missed the mark by writing a piece better suited to the blogosphere than the lofty halls of academia.

Nonetheless, I’ve been very privileged this semester to be able to explore my capacity as an ICT leader in building a Web 2.0-enabled learning design for my school and evaluate our recent efforts with Google Apps for Education and Moodle. The sum total is the following paper I wrote, which argues that where my system falls short is in compromising the leadership potential of e-learning teacher innovators with increasing managerial demands much better suited to professional IT managers than teachers like myself.

I’m a lucky one. Schools like mine have employed full-time IT managers for at least the last few years, letting me get on with the business of leading my staff and students to critically select and implement technologies in a way that creatively empowers the user to construct their own learning. The biggest challenge is asking teachers to re-think what it means to learn in the first place. Ultimately there’s little place for didacticism and teacher-centred transmission in my vision. Just as well I have the time and patience to work on making this vision a reality, eh?

[scribd id=41375173 key=key-u6q4bggvxzj81x4w61t mode=list]

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Head in the Cloud

Over the past few days, it’s been very hard to contain my excitement over Google’s recent moves to add all the applications from standard Google accounts to Google Apps for Education. While the core suite of applications – Mail, Docs and Calendar – are extremely useful and have put my school on the Web 2.0 map, I’ve been so disappointed that other Google apps like Reader, Picasa and Blogger have been off-limits for so long.

Sure, students can create their own Google accounts, you say? Having worked with frustrated teachers and students who all-too-easily forget usernames and passwords, I’ve really come to appreciate the ability to control accounts as the school administrator and have kids quickly online and using the tools they need to get ahead.

Now when all of my students log in, they get immediate access to an incredibly powerful set of Web 2.0 applications without the need to enter a single name or additional password! Exploring these is going to take some time, but it’s great to know they’re there for anyone to use.

Some of the new applications I’ll be running PD on are:

1. Google Reader

Call it the nerd factor in me, but I have to say that hands down, Google Reader is the most remarkably simple yet sophisticated piece of the Web 2.0 pie. While many educators have consigned RSS feeding into the too-hard basket of technology education (installing feed readers, locating RSS feeds, keeping up to date, etc.), Google Reader makes RSS reading fun, social and very easy to get started. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a valuable teaching doorway into the vast world of internet content. I’m really looking forward to sharing feeds/articles and helping my students getting started with organising their reading on the web.

2. Picasa Web Albums

Google’s extremely generous web storage allocation (I know it’s now in the several gigabytes but have lost count) is incredibly good news for Google Apps Education students making use of this photo management gem. However, it’s Picasa’s easy integration with other Web 2.0 services like Blogger, Reader and Docs along with mobile integration and a very powerful photo management application for Windows and Mac that wins hands down.

3. Blogger

While not my blogging tool of choice (sorry Google, WordPress has the edge for now), Blogger makes blogging very easy and hassle-free. It’s great to know that my kids can get started without the need for another username or password, and I’ll be incredibly keen to explore this as a platform for electronic learning portfolios.

Pieces in a Web 2.0 Puzzle

It’s easy to see that already, Google is bringing to the web the same kind of integration that Apple brings through suites of applications like iLife and iWork that easily “talk to” one another  without the need to transcode data or switch out of one app and into another (just think about the “Blog this” buttons in Picasa and Reader  or the Picasa Web functionality  in Blogger). As a technology expert/administrator, I see this as a level playing field for all teachers and students. While not all of the tools will be used all of the time, making them available is the first step to transforming the curriculum and the way we teach with technology.

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Google Apps: On Scalable Web 2.0

Colleagues often tell me that what makes me a credible and helpful technology mentor is the sheer number of hours I spend in the classroom. Although teachers can be a cynical lot, I tend to agree that when corporate technology experts step into schools to trial something new, they often miss the mark simply because they fail to understand what it is like teaching a six-period day. Teachers can and will baulk at new technology because it means extra work. The challenge is in convincing them that the work will pay off, both for them professionally and for their students’ learning. My relative success is in making sure of this payoff for myself before I suggest something to colleagues.

Web 2.0 is a classic case-in-point. There are incredible gains to be made when incorporating some – or a full range – of web-based tools, services and applications into the curriculum. As a teacher, I cope with this well. I find it easy to set up a class list of Wikispaces accounts, manage threaded discussions, share media and facilitate collaborative reading and writing.

The problem is that what one teacher does in one classroom is all-too-often difficult to replicate and scale up across other classes, year groups or whole schools. Keeping track of user names and passwords for Blogger pages or Gliffy accounts is time-consuming – even the most able technology-minded teacher tears hair out when students lose (or can’t/won’t remember) basic details. Other teachers who struggle with the technology may simply avoid it altogether or pay lip service.

My reflection on Web 2.0 is that it needs to be taken in slow, measurable and scalable steps. Scalability is the main reason why I’ve decided to go with Google Apps Education Edition – which gives administrative control to domain owners to create email and apps accounts for an entire education institution. This gives us a starting point for all students in the school to be able to log in and access some of the best Web 2.0 collaborative tools available. Most importantly, we create and control the accounts – which provides security and a consistent experience. When teachers are ready to try online collaboration, the accounts are ready and students know how to use them.

For anyone who doesn’t know about Google Apps Education Edition, you might find the following video of interest:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRYRbPCHTck]

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Searching for a Web 2.0 Learning Framework

I just finished reading an inspiring article by my old Macquarie lecturer John Hedburg and two of his colleagues, Matt Bower and Andreas Kuswara. “Conceptualising Web 2.0 enabled learning designs” documents some of the seminal work being done by academics who take the time not only to research, but to see, first hand, Web 2.0 in action in the classroom.

The article suggests that critical use of Web 2.0 moves well away from the traditional transmissive model of teaching towards co-constructive learning, which takes constructivism as a basis and builds on it through collaboration, re-defined roles and asynchronous learning. Their argument which follows on from this is that co-constructivism places “responsibility for production on groups of learners so that they can benefit from both the peer-assisted elements of dialogic pedagogies as well as the productive component of constructionist pedagogies.”

Ultimately – and unfortunately – the academe remains ethereal and perceptually irrelevant for teachers who fail to take the time to connect research with practice. For the rest of us, however, the value of a rigerous, theoretical framework in which to analyse and evaluate the power and potential of Web 2.0 is another important steppingstone  on the journey.