POLYTECHNIC STUDENTS' LEARNING EXPERIENCES WITH WEB 2.0 AS CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING TOOLS IN A PARTICIPATORY CULTURE

This paper aims to explore, describe and understand students' learning experiences with Web 2.0 technologies in school in Singapore. This paper will also look into the problems, the difficulties and the constraints that polytechnic students face with the use of Web 2.0 in learning. From an exploration of the students' experiences and attitudes with use of Web 2.0 for learning, this study hopes to develop a more in depth understanding of the characteristics integral to pedagogical practice and how students can leverage on worldwide knowledge as part of their learning experiences with Web 2.0 applications. The focus of this paper will be on a pragmatic exploration of Web 2.0 applications such as Blogs, YouTube, Wikis and Facebook as illustrative and typical examples of technologies that reflect the changing landscape of our students' learning. Clearly, the choice of these four applications does not delimit the categorisation of Web 2.0 tools to only these four; however, by limiting the choice to an exploration of blogs, YouTube, Facebook and Wikis as illustrative of Web 2.0 I hope that this will provide some starting frames of reference for using Web 2.0 for teaching and learning. Through a mixed-method approach by interpretation of quantitative data through a survey of polytechnic students within the School of Business faculty in Singapore followed by a qualitative approach of one on one interviews with students, I hope to gain an in-depth understanding of students' learning experiences with Web 2.0 learning technologies.