Educational Fears over Web 2.0 – are the new technologies encouraging heightened disengagement?

Selwyn writes about the following concerns:-

·      Concerns over heightened disengagement

·      Concerns over the detrimental effect that Web 2.0 tools may have on ‘traditional’ skills and literacies

·      Concerns over realignment of the power relationships between teachers and students – e.g. websites like ‘Ratemyprofessors.com’ allowing students to aggregate public feedback on different teachers.

Weller has a different view, writing that Web 2.0 should, in theory, be perfect for “a more participatory, socially constructed view of knowledge.”

My own view is that people are inherently social and that we will see increasing socialization on the web. Early adopters of technology – ‘geeks’ – tend to be more introverted and may embrace aspects of Web 2.0 that allow for a more introverted approach – and this may be interpreted as ‘heightened disengagement’. But as technologies advance and become more accessible to a wider range of users, a wider range of students is naturally using them a lot more. Educational tools haven’t caught up yet with this drive for sociability – and this is why many students are texting or  using Facebook during classes and lectures. Students are highly motivated to engage with eachother, it’s just that educational tools aren’t yet in existence that channel and encourage this motivation towards learning.

A linked point – teenagers and young adults (and most students are in this age group) are at a stage where they are still developing the identities they want to present to the world. It can be helpful and reassuring, when one’s sense of one’s own identity is uncertain, to be able to present a carapace to the world – so they may embrace technologies that allow them to operate from behind a safe barrier, and this may look to us like heightened disengagement. The teenager sitting at the dinner table ignoring the people around him/her whilst texting messages to friends is a classic example. But this behaviour is not a function of a desire for isolation, it is a matter of secure positioning for socialization – technology is offering a space to consolidate a stable sense of identity for presentation to peers through a text message or a Facebook page.


[H800 Week 18 Activity 2]