Chapter 1 Introduction
2.5 Teacher perceptions of use of Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning
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from studies (An & William, 2010; Crook et al., 2008; Ertmer et al., 2012; Goktas et al., 2013) are repeatedly showing that teachers fail to integrate technology in their classrooms.
This study addresses this issue by exploring the factors that influence teachers’ integration of Web 2.0 tools in their professional practice.
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older children and teenagers would be using Web 2.0 tools regularly and that teachers could keep the students engaged with lessons through Web 2.0 tools. All of this suggests that pre-service teachers understand the potential benefit of Web 2.0 tools but might not always use these tools, due to the lack of confidence on the best way to use these tools.
Cheon, Song, Jones and Nam (2010) argue that teachers who feel that Web 2.0 tools are easy to use and useful are more likely to adopt Web 2.0 tools for teaching, whereas Sadaf et al. (2012) found that teachers’ likelihood of using Web-based tools in their classrooms depended largely on whether they thought these tools had the potential of positively influencing and improving students’ learning and engagement. The perception of the usefulness, ease of use and strong self-efficacy beliefs could be due to the teachers’
exposure to Web 2.0 technologies during their normal daily activities that helped them understand the value of using these technologies in their professional practice.
2.5.1 Positive themes
Generally, teachers believe that Web technologies have positive benefits for educational purposes such as student motivation and engagement, improved teacher-student interaction, accessibility of learning and development of collaboration skills. (Waycott, Gray, Thompson, Sheard, Clerehan, Richardson, & Hamilton, 2010).). These Web technologies can also help to enhance student learning and manage teaching activities (Waycott et al., 2010).
2.5.1.1 Motivation
In a study with secondary school teachers, Ertmer et al. (2012) found that internal factors such as passion for technology and having a problem-solving mentality influence teachers’
use of Web 2.0 tools in their practices. It can be argued that teachers are passionate about using Web 2.0 tools in their professional practice because they are regular users of these tools in their daily lives and more importantly, they have understood the affordances of these tools for use in teaching and learning.
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According to Clark et al. (2009), students who used social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube were showing more interest in their studies, were more engaged and used these sites to facilitate their learning.
2.5.1.2 Improved teacher-student interaction
Capo and Orellana (2011) and Hunter-Brown (2012) contended that teachers perceive that social media would improve student-teacher communications and that some students prefer using Facebook groups to easily get in touch with their teachers.
2.5.1.3 Accessibility of learning
Researchers (Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes, 2009; Weller, 2013) have reported that today’s learners have more choices, in particular the use of mobile/tablet devices, about how and where to spend their learning time (for example in classrooms and outside formal face-to-face teaching – at home, in private and public places) than they did a decade ago.
With tools like Facebook, students can engage in group projects and continue their schoolwork outside the classroom, as pointed out by the articles written by Carter, Foulger and Ewbank (2008) and Junco (2012). Meabon Bartow (2014) and Mao (2014) have argued that social media are enabling contact among students and teachers outside normal school hours and facilitating the inclusion of multimedia into teaching and learning activities. So, Web 2.0 tools can help in easing lesson content delivery and making learning activities more attractive.
2.5.1.4 Development of collaboration skills
Several studies (Den Exter et al., 2012; Meishar-Tal and Gorsky, 2010; Trentin, 2009) have shown that with Web 2.0 tools students can work collaboratively to build knowledge. In the same vein, Fewkes and McCabe (2012) contend that using Facebook encourages self- regulation and accountability both individually and collaboratively among students. It can be argued that it is the students’ immersion in social networking sites such as Facebook that develops their collaborative skills and eventually gives them the possibility to engage more in their learning through the use of learning tasks within these tools.
36 2.5.2 Negative themes
Technology distraction and inappropriate use of the Internet are the two negative themes that have surfaced in the researcher’s literature review.
2.5.2.1 Technology distraction
Dealing with distraction and managing classes that have an Internet connection are major challenges that teachers perceive. Bate, MacNish and Males (2012) conducted a study that examined the implementation of a 1:1 laptop program in a school for boys in Perth, Western Australia. One issue that has emerged from the study is the problem of managing student distraction. The researchers have argued that managing ICT-rich classrooms and minimising distractions in classrooms are issues that teachers have to deal with regularly.
Thus, instead of Web 2.0 tools helping students to participate and collaborate formally and informally with others, these tools could turn out to be a distraction in the class.
2.5.2.2 Inappropriate use of technology
Invasion of privacy, exposure to mockery, cyberbullying and production of inappropriate material are among the common fears of teachers about using technology in class (Crook et al., 2008). These fears have also been reported by Howard (2013) and Tindell and Bohlander (2012) who have shown that texting, game playing and social networking were common inappropriate uses of technology in school. There are security risks that are associated with social networking sites, especially when sites such as Facebook are accessed via mobile devices where privacy can be invaded and data can be shared involuntarily (Henderson, Auld & Johnson, 2014). Whether teachers are using social networking sites for personal reasons or in their professional practice, there is a possibility of public search of their profiles, including students seeing aspects of their private lives (Henderson et al., 2014). It seems that teachers tend to be apprehensive of the risk of their professional and personal privacy being compromised if their Facebook profiles are viewed by students. Teachers should be careful when using Web 2.0 tools as there is blurring of lines between what information is private and what is for public view (Huijser, 2008).
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In a study by Waycott et al. (2010), teachers expressed that the problems in using Web technologies in education were the increase in workload, dealing with technical issues that may take time out from lessons, losing face-to-face interactions and inappropriate use of the tools by students. Another study by Sharples, Graber, Harrison, and Logan (2009) also found that many teachers would like to have the opportunity to make use of Web 2.0 tools in their classrooms and felt that schools should allow access to several Web 2.0 applications to explore their educational value (Sharples et al., 2009). However, many teachers were concerned with online bullying and the ease of plagiarism. Teachers are not at all opposed to using Web 2.0 technologies, as they are also daily users of social technologies themselves, but often their concerns about bullying and plagiarism are reason enough to prevent them from integrating Web 2.0 tools into an educational context.
Teachers are primarily afraid of the disturbance that Web 2.0 tools could possibly have in a teaching and learning environment, such as online bullying, in addition to the amount of answerability that may be required from them (Clark et al., 2009; Sharples et al., 2009).
This indicates that apprehension may be the main reason why many teachers are often reluctant to integrate Web 2.0 tools into their teaching.
The literature on the integration of Web 2.0 tools in secondary education is scarce in current research and it is mostly the potentials of Web 2.0 tools in education that have been investigated (Albion, 2008). However, a few research studies and reports (Crook &
Harrison 2008; Lee & Tsai 2010; Light & Polin, 2011; Pan & Franklin, 2011) indicate that though teachers have generally positive attitudes towards new technologies, their uptake of Web 2.0 tools in teaching may be limited by low self-efficacy, lack of experience with Internet and Web 2.0 tools, lack of technical and pedagogical knowledge of using Web 2.0, lack of importance placed on Web 2.0 in teaching, lack of professional development, the national curriculum not fostering collaborative learning, and infrastructural issues including insufficient bandwidth, not enough computer access and lack of technical support. This study is also attempting to explore the in-service teachers’ perceptions of use Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning.
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