After reading Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes (2009) and Crook (2011), I find logic in considering their arguments/implications in reverse chronological order: Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes’ work first, then Crook’s.
I think Crook’s findings are intriguing as snapshots of students’ perceptions of academic Web 2.0 implementation; however, I was dissatisfied with his conclusions. Crook left the tensions students expressed under-evaluated; there was less innovative vision for overcoming the conflicts between in-school and out-of-school Web 2.0 use than the other article offered. Possibly the most hopeful sentence in the entire article came in last paragraph: “While the contrasts and tensions identified here are challenging, it is important to understand them if Web 2.0 services are to be productively drawn into the powerful contexts of school inquiry, collaboration, publication and literacy” (p. 79). A limitation of Crook’s study might be its focus solely on the student-view of Web 2.0, but including no discussion of what comes next (positive or negative) beyond student insight left me questioning Crook’s intended takeaway.
I think Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes’ implications for future research are more persuasive, and the directional map that should “follow” Crook’s work. They acknowledge the rich ideas for improving Web 2.0 in education that could be cultivated directly from students and suggest first understanding how youth are already meaningfully implementing Web 2.0 and then adapting school-use accordingly. I whole-heartedly agree with their goal to gain “deeper understandings of learners’ products and practices and potential insights about how to support, document, and design more engaging, media-rich, expanded contexts for learning over time” (p. 250).
Hi Sarah,
I like your thoughts on reversing the chronological order to make more sense of the conclusions drawn by the authors. You note in your second paragraph that Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes’ (2009) article identifies some important future considerations for research and that researchers should perhaps look to how students are already using web 2.0 as the way forward. I am wondering if you have any specific ideas in mind for what kind of research might occur in the future. Specifically, Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes point to cloud computing and social operating systems as very promising avenues to pursue. Do think these conclusions are still valid, or has the body of research moved on in the past decade?
Hi, Sarah. As I read your post, I was thinking of the many hours of conversation that you and I have had over the past few months as we worked, together with others’ on Chris’ research team, on a review of research related to social media in education. Based on this work, we have insights into the current gaps in research related to social media in education. Almost all of the dozens of studies we have read conclude with observations about future research.
I encourage you to draw on our literature review experience and share those insights in your courses and in other professional contexts as opportunities arise. For example, in response to this prompt, I wonder if you could have shortened your statements about the course readings and added some thoughts about promising directions for future research, based on your readings of recent scholarship in this area.
The opening paragraph of your response this week is an example of something you could possibly have cut to make space for a meatier observation. It’s not really important that you decided to write about the papers in reverse chronological order. There are only two of them. Plus, you mention them in chronological order in that first paragraph, which is a bit confusing.
Instead of making a point about the order in which you’re discussing the course readings, perhaps you could have said something about gaps we continue to observe in research into social media and learning. For example, we see few attempts to measure impact of social media use on learning outcomes, few longitudinal studies, few studies actually using analytics.
So, don’t be shy about adding new, research-based insights in a context like this. I know it’s hard to do that while answering the prompt and staying in the word limit. But it may be worth a try in the future.
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for your response! I agree with the ideas in your about cloud computing research that you mention in your own post. Collaboration is a huge affordance of technology that we are only just beginning to understand. I also think that global connectedness will be a big part of this. Dr. Don Leu talking about this is his presentation the other day; students working together from around the world is likely to be a new direction for research.
I also think that the emphasis on digital literacy will only grow in research. More and more we are recognizing it as an important and separate skill from traditional literacy that is a critical life skill. As our readings have suggested, this is still an emerging field that I think will take off as we see graduates struggling despite completing high school. Clearly a piece of their education is missing: digital literacy.
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