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Posted by mmardis in : Check this out! , trackback The findings of this year’s longitudinal study suggest that Web 2.0 tools are gaining popularity in schools across the U.S. These tools are enabling forms of communication, collaboration, and learning never seen in K-12 education. These findings are exciting because they signal the timely, if not prescient, nature of the Standards for the 21st Century Learner. Even a year ago, Web 2.0 tools in schools were less widespread, and so was the need for standards that spoke directly to the role of the school library not only in fostering information literacy and knowledge management. The Standards support a library in which students take responsibility for discovering lifelong curiosity and powerful communication in addition to locating, using, and making sense of information.
Still, the findings also suggest that the use of Web 2.0 tools are in their early stages and that, in some situations, are subject to less-than-ideal integration environments. Research in related fields like school administration and educational technology suggests that the implementation of these tools reveals four levels of influence that take the form of “digital divides” in schools. 
The first level of digital divide is access. Access to adequate amounts and types of hardware is an ongoing issue, but we’re now seeing access play out in schools in terms of bandwidth available for applications like streaming video and audio. The second level of digital divide is skill and Web 2.0 tools present a new professional development and personal mastery imperative for many schools. The third, and emerging, level of digital divide is policy. All too often in schools, we’re seeing technology policies that enforce slow hardware replacement cycles or restrictive use and filtering policies that block Web 2.0 applications. The fourth digital divide, motivation, cannot be overlooked. That is, we’re seeing children, teachers, media specialists, and administrators all having different motivations to either adopt, ignore, or actively thwart learning innovation with Web 2.0 tools. Todd Marshall at Syracuse University is doing some very interesting work in this area. The divide model can be used to describe the implementation in schools if one considers that if problems exist in any quadrant, none of the other quadrants can function properly. But, the quadrant model is just my opinion. What do you think, AASLblog readers? - Which Web 2.0 tools is your school using?
- What do you consider the hindrances or helps to their implementation in your school?
- What’s your role in the using Web 2.0 for learning? What would you like it to be?
- What questions can we ask on future versions of the longitudinal survey to document how the school library is changing?
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