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Web 2.0 and the school of the future,today
 Neil Selwyn
 London Knowledge Lab Institute of Education, University of London, UK 
email: n.selwyn@ioe.ac.uk  paper presented to OECD/CERI Expert meeting on ‘
The School of the Future, Today
’Santa Catarina, Brazil18
th
to 20
th
November 2009
Summary:
This paper offers an overview of the educational implications of web 2.0technologies for schools – arguing that current portrayals of web 2.0 use replicate a long-standing tendency in education for exaggerated and ideologically driven reactions totechnology. The paper concludes by arguing for the need to retain a realistic, if not critical, perspective on schools and web 2.0 – seeking to find ways of using web 2.0 technologies towork 
with
the schools of today, rather than
against 
them.
Keywords:
Web 2.0, social web, internet, schools, schooling
 
Web 2.0 and the school of the future,today
Introduction
The future of schools and schooling constitutes one of the major areas of current educationdebate – especially in light of the increasing importance of digital technologies incontemporary society. Indeed, the focus of this conference on ‘
The School of the Future,Today
’ reflects the considerable enthusiasm that surrounds the use of new digitaltechnologies for learning and education. Whilst having undoubted educational potential, thesedigital technologies mark a significant area of uncertainty as schools progress into the seconddecade of the twenty-first century. These uncertainties are encapsulated in current debatesover the place of so-called ‘web 2.0’ technologies in education. This paper offers an overviewof the educational implications of web 2.0 technologies for schools – arguing that current portrayals of web 2.0 use replicate a long-standing tendency in education for exaggerated andideologically driven reactions to technology. The paper concludes by arguing for the need toretain a realistic, if not critical, perspective on schools and web 2.0 – seeking to find ways of using web 2.0 technologies to work 
with
the schools of today, rather than
against 
them.
What is web 2.0 and why is it of educational importance?
Alongside other tags such as the ‘social web’, ‘modern web’ and ‘social software’, the notionof ‘web 2.0’ provides a convenient umbrella term for a host of recent internet tools and practices ranging from social networking and blogging to ‘folksonomies’ and ‘mash-ups’. Ina technical sense, web 2.0 can be argued to refer to an increased
 socialisation
of internettools, applications and services. As Matthew Allen (2008, n.p.) describes, the notion of web2.0 reflects “approaches to the design and functionality of Web sites and the services theyoffer, emerging in recent years, and essentially describing technological implementations that prioritise the manipulation and presentation of data through the interaction of both human andcomputer agents”. Of course, many computer scientists dispute the technical necessity of such rebranding of the internet. As Scholz (2008) argues, many claims for the technicalnovelty of web 2.0 applications are misleading, with much use of the term driven by acommercial and political ‘branding mania and obsession with newness’. Yet issues of originality notwithstanding, the notion of web 2.0 is an important framing device for understanding contemporary internet use - defining ‘what enters the public discourse aboutthe impact of the Internet on society’ (Scholz 2008, n.p.)In particular the ‘web 2.0’ label reflects the changing nature of contemporary online activity – not least what is described as a ‘mass’ internet connectivity based around the collectiveactions of online user communities rather than individual users (see O’Reilly 2005, Shirky2008, Brusilovsky 2008). Thus in contrast to the ‘broadcast’ mode of information exchangethat characterized internet use in the 1990s, the web applications of the 2000s are seen to relyon openly shared digital content that is authored, critiqued and re-configured by a mass of users - what has been described as ‘many-to-many’ connectivity as opposed to ‘one-to-many’
2
 
transmission. Put simply, the current prominence of ‘web 2.0’ within popular and academicdiscussion of the internet reflects the growing importance that is being placed on interaction between and within groups of internet users. In this sense, web 2.0 reinvigorates many of thedebates that began in the 1990s about the transformatory nature of the internet (Roberts2009). Yet unlike the internet of the 1990s (‘web 1.0’ as some commentators have nowretrospectively branded it), current debates are propelled by notions of online immediacywhere users can get what they want, when they want it - “propelled … by a fantasy of intuition in which the Web already knows what you want because it is you” (Evens 2009).The notion of web 2.0 therefore merits serious consideration – not least in describing what isseen to be a renewed ‘spirit’ and ‘ethos’ of contemporary internet use. In this sense theindividual technological artefacts that are positioned under the web 2.0 label are of lessimportance than the wider ideals that are seen to drive their use (Allen 2008). For example,web 2.0 can be seen as conveying a new sense of 
economy
of internet use (based aroundnotions such as the ‘attention economy’ and the provision of ostensibly ‘free’ services inreturn for greater audience share. Web 2.0 can also be seen as conveying a new sense of internet
user 
– one “who is more engaged, active and a participant in the key business of theInternet: creating, maintaining and expanding the ‘content’ which is the basis for using theInternet in the first place” (Allen 2008, n.p.). Finally, and perhaps most significantly, web 2.0can also be seen as conveying a new sense of the
 politics
of the internet – based aroundlibertarian notions of empowered individuals and diminished institutions - “expressed intraditional democratic terms, emphasising freedom of choice and the empowerment of individuals through the ‘architecture of participation’” (Allen 2008, n.p.). In all theseinstances, web 2.0 therefore presents a significant and specific challenge to orthodox notionsof technological and institutional arrangements, economic structures and social relations. In particular, web 2.0 is felt by many commentators to address a number of ‘participatorydeficits’ in terms of public/state services – positioning state services around the needs of theindividual, with services such as education driven by the individual rather than the institution(Evens 2009).Yet despite the significant political, economic and institutional ramifications of web 2.0 for the formal provision of education, most of the reaction to web 2.0 within educational circleshas been shaped by concerns over learning and individual learners. In particular the privileging of participatory and collaborative group activity within web 2.0 debate has beenwelcomed as having clear parallels with contemporary understandings of learning andeducation, and it is perhaps unsurprising that it has been the learning and pedagogy-relatedaspects of web 2.0 that have prompted greatest enthusiasm of late amongst educators andeducationalists (see Davies and Merchant 2009). In particular, it has been argued that web 2.0 practices have a strong affinity with socio-cultural accounts of ‘authentic’ learning whereknowledge is co-constructed actively by learners with the support of communal socialsettings – taking the form of constantly reassessed ‘collective agreement’ (see Dede 2008). Agreat deal of attention has been paid to the personalised and socially situated forms of learning (intended or otherwise) that can be found within web 2.0 practices, with learners saidto gain from participatory experiences in the co-construction of online knowledge (e.g.Lameras
et al 
. 2009). Thus, web 2.0 has now come to embody the long-held belief amongsteducation technologists that learning best takes place within technology-supported networksof learners involved in the creation as well as consumption of content. For these reasonsalone, web 2.0 is now being touted in some quarters as “the future of education” (Hargadon2008).
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