Technology has changed the way people learn and communicate;
however, the influence of technology in schools continues to be limited. The internet has gone through many
transformations from Web 1.0 creating the information age, to Web 2.0 creating
an age of social networking and collaboration, to Web 3.0 creating an age where
the internet has entered the real world.
Students are operating in a technology rich environment at home, yet
they are not having the same experience in the classroom.
There is no question that Web 1.0 changed
education through providing a global library, where everyone could find anything
or even author anything. In the classroom, teacher preparation programs
considered Web Quests as cutting-edge examples of the effective use of
technology. However, information literacy (IL) is lacking in most teacher
education programs teacher education programs (Smith,
2013). Information
literacy is an essential component education.
Not only do consumers of information need find information, but they
also need to evaluate the information that they find. The idea that western academic scholars
control knowledge is no longer relevant to our world. Yet, college
professors have noted the lack of information literacy in freshman entering
their institution (Backe, 2009).
Web 2.0 further
changed the way that learning occurs.
Collaboration has started to be implement in classrooms. Asynchronous learning through forums, wikis,
Google applications, calendars, citation tools, and social bookmarking are among
the tools implemented on a limited basis (Chen & Bryer, 2012). Some programs capitalize on the social
learning aspect of online learning to enhance the depth and quality of student
learning. Epals provides a collaborative
learning network that facilitates collaborative learning between students and
teachers in different countries.
Additionally, Moodle, an open-source learning environment, provides
several applications including wikis, forums, and workshops to increase student
learning. However, the use of social
media applications for learning remains largely untapped despite its popularity
with students (Chen & Bryer, 2012).
Bandwidth has increased allowing for streaming
videos and online synchronous learning. The
use of streaming videos in the classroom to enrich learning is popular. Flipped-classrooms, where the student view
lectures at home and participates in project-based learning in the classroom is
another way in which learning can be enhanced.
Khan academy and other online schools provide free lessons to enhance
instruction.
Web 3.0 is already upon us and the potential for
enhancing learning and teaching has expanded.
Wearable technology, semantics, 3D visualizations, virtual reality,
augmented reality, distributed computing, big data, linked data, cloud
computing, and global repositories are all tools available to enhance learning (Dominic,
Francis, & Pilomenraj, 2014).
Wearable technology has enabled learning to occur anywhere, students can
easily access the internet from their phones, through distributive computing
applications create their assignments, and save them to their cloud where they turn
them into their teacher to be graded. Imagine
a student in New Delhi, India, and another student in Denver, Colorado,
conducting a study on the environmental impact of air pollution while another
student wearing Google Glasses, in a rainforest in Brazil, collects data. Of course, they would be working with a
scientist to gather and analyze information for the United Nations
Environmental program. This is not something
of the future; it is only an example of what can be happening today.
By Rob Koch
References
Chen, B.,
& Bryer, T. (2012). Investigating instructional strategies for using social
media in formal and informal learning. International Review of Research in
Open & Distance Learning, 13(1), 87-104.
Badke, W.
(2009). How we failed the net generation. Online, 33(4), 47-49.
Dominic,
M., Francis, S., & Pilomenraj, A. (2014). E-learning in web 3.0.
International Journal of Modern Education & Computer Science, 6(2), 8.
Smith, J.
K. (2013). Secondary teachers and information literacy (IL): Teacher
understanding and perceptions of IL in the classroom. Library &
Information Science Research (07408188), 35(3), 216-222. doi:10.1016/j.lisr.2013.03.003
