Web 2.0: Challenges and Opportunities for Media Education and beyond

Abstract

The nature of knowledge is being redefined by a new media landscape that allows all participants to be media producers and owners. Without a comprehensive strategy to include Web 2.0 tools and social media practices within schools, powerful new skills will be neither harnessed, nor developed. Despite the challenge to the relationship between students (digital natives) and teachers (digital immigrants) that Web 2.0 tools present, teachers are still the vital link to supporting students and giving meaning to the practices they engage in, including developing critical thinking in an information age. This article discusses the challenges and opportunities presented to media education by Web 2.0 tools and social media practices and vice versa. Consistently, it can be demonstrated that these symbiotic potentials are reflected beyond the microcosm of media education in schools. Future performance at work and functioning within a global economy and the effect of collaborative networking skills on local, national and global societies go further than the challenge to school curricula. Local specific effects of ‘co-learning’ and the new status of ‘learner voice’ on learning experiences show the beginnings of a gradual influence that has far-reaching potentials.