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Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship in a Digital Age

Web 2.0 and Classroom Research: What Path Should We Take Now?

CHRISTINE GREENHOW is a postdoctoral associate in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota, 125 Peik Hall, 159 Pillsbury Drive, Minneapolis, MN 55455; greenhow{at}umn.edu. Her research focuses on how people learn, teach, and collaborate using emerging social digital technologies (www.cgreenhow.org). She is currently leading a study of adolescent learners’ knowledge development, literacy, and community formation within and across two designed online social media spaces. She is the winner of the 2008 University of Minnesota Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar award.

BETH ROBELIA is the executive director of Kitchen Table Learning, a research and evaluation company, 1496 Arona Street, Saint Paul, MN 55108; brobelia{at}kitchentablelearning.com. Her work on informal learning has spanned youth development, tutoring, teaching, and shipboard environmental education programs. Her work addresses how learning technologies can be used to bridge gender differences in science. She is currently investigating how construction toys and 3-D software develop students’ spatial reasoning abilities.

JOAN E. HUGHES is an associate professor of instructional technology in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin, 244M Sanchez Building, Austin, TX 78712; joanh{at}mail.utexas.edu. Her research examines preservice and in-service teachers’ development of knowledge and practice of technology integration in content areas. She is currently leading a longitudinal study with more than 7 years of data that examines the impact of 1:1 laptop computing in preservice teacher education.

Since Windschitl first outlined a research agenda for the World Wide Web and classroom research, significant shifts have occurred in the nature of the Web and the conceptualization of classrooms. Such shifts have affected constructs of learning and instruction, and paths for future research. This article discusses the characteristics of Web 2.0 that differentiate it from the Web of the 1990s, describes the contextual conditions in which students use the Web today, and examines how Web 2.0’s unique capabilities and youth’s proclivities in using it influence learning and teaching. Two important themes, learner participation and creativity and online identity formation, emerged from this analysis and support a new wave of research questions. A stronger research focus on students’ everyday use of Web 2.0 technologies and their learning with Web 2.0 both in and outside of classrooms is needed. Finally, insights on how educational scholarship might be transformed with Web 2.0 in light of these themes are discussed.

Key Words: classroom research • computers and learning • educational reform • instructional technologies • research methodology • technology

Educational Researcher, Vol. 38, No. 4, 246-259 (2009)
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X09336671


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