A Predictive Profile of Youths’ Web 2.0 Outside-School Activities

• In Event: Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Technology in Middle Grades Schools

Abstract

Web 2.0 (Madden & Fox, 2006) technologies offer opportunities for user contribution and interaction with others. Ninety-two percent of all teenagers are active on the web (Purcell, 2012), some in more ways than others. Students without access to this peer-intensive “participatory culture” miss out on learning opportunities, which are vital to the technology-based nature of our culture (Jenkins, 2006, McLeod, 2010). We present a predictive “profile” of the middle-school aged, Web 2.0 users. Knowing what our students do outside of school, and how those experiences vary from student to student, help educators choose technologies for instruction and learning that both leverage what students are already doing or may wish they were doing, making learning motivating and connected to real life.

Authors

• Michelle Fulks Read, Texas State University

• Sara Jolly Jones, University of Houston

• Joan E. Hughes, The University of Texas - Austin