Web 2.0 Influence

With everything that teachers are asked to do today asking them to shift their literacy instruction from a traditional pen and paper based exercise to a monitor and a keyboard, is a difficult transition. Imagine if that same teacher has been teaching for over 20 years and is unfamiliar with the new technology, getting that teacher to attempt the switch is nearly impossible. In order to make the transition (from the traditional to the modern) meaningful for the students it requires teachers who are committed to the cause. That commitment has to come from a teacher who is aware of the direction our world is taking. This means that we have to look at what is happening outside of the schools walls and beyond our test results. Ultimately the question has to be, have we prepared this students for the next step of their lives?

Internet communication has changed the way many of us communicate. The fact that entire courses can be completed without a student ever leaving home is something that could not have been imagined twenty years ago. E-mail, chat sites, and blogs have all contributed to a change in the way we communicate with each other. Writing skills are improved just by the increased volume of writing we do in our daily lives. Some argue that the use of acronyms and the new form of short hand many students use in their communication, can negatively affect their writing, but the role of educators needs to be teaching students the appropriate time and place for that kind of communication. For instance, an email to a close friend should look very different next one to for your boss or business associate and our job as educators would be to explain and demonstrate this difference for the studnets.

The extent of Web 2.0 technologies and their influence on education is only touched on here. There are countless areas of literacy that have been touched by technological advances. As mentioned previously newer technologies are being developed so quickly that it is too fast to even get a true grasp of the impact on literacy. Like with most new phenomenon the true effects are hard to gauge, but you can be sure there are good and bad effects associated with technology in respect to literacy development. Teachers need to make their best judgments when using technology and try to counteract some of the bad effects whenever possible.