DEVELOPMENT OF A PROGRAM ON WEB 2 TOOLS & TEST THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PROGRAM

Sub theme: Innovative & Best practices for excellence ‘The great Growling Engine of Change today- Technology’ Web 2.0 technologies have “blurred the line between producers and consumers of content and has shifted attention from access to information toward access to other people” (Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 18). Emphasizing a participatory culture, Web 2.0 technologies encourage and enable teachers and learners to share ideas and collaborate in innovative ways. They also force educators to rethink the way we teach and learn and to transform our education practices so that we can support more active and meaningful learning that involves “learning to be” as well as “learning about.” The study is significant because, today’s is the age of digitization and it is very important that teachers make use of ICT in their teaching learning process. Today’s students are more technosavy then the teachers so it is very essential to make use of this positive aspect in the teaching learning and making this process a two way learner centered process. The research is a guideline for the teachers to know how technology can be use d in knowledge creation and what difficulties are experienced when using technology. The present action research is on web 2 tools where tools like blogs, you tube videos and Adobe Flash CS6 is used as a web tool for the student teachers of M. Ed course as these students are would be teacher educators and also would be teachers, heads in different educational institutions. This paper focuses on assessing the awareness of the use of web 2 tools in their teaching learning process and development of a program based on web 2 tools. A program was developed by the researcher for the student teachers and it was implemented for a period of 20 days. The researcher also interviewed the student teachers to find out what they felt about the program. The sample included under the study was 30 student teachers from one teacher education college of Pune City for the program and 67 student’s teachers from different teacher education colleges were selected for assessing the awareness of use of web 2 tools. The sample was selected by purposive sampling technique. Multi method approach was adopted by the researcher as the study included survey, product development method and grounded theory. Mixed method design was used as the research included both qualitative and quantitative methods. The research design adopted was convergent parallel design. The tools included open and close ended questionnaire for survey, program on web 2 tools was developed which consisted of lessons to be taught using you tube video sessions, and blogs were created by the students where they posted their discussions or views related to the topics taught. A separate aspect of ADOBE Flash CS6 Aarhat Multidisciplinary International Education Research Journal (AMIERJ) Page 12 SJIF Impact Factor 6.236 Peer Reviewed Refereed Journal AMIERJ Volume–VIII, Issues–I ISSN–2278-5655 January - February 2019 was also taught to them where they learnt to make invitations cards, banners, certificates as a part of their skill development. From the data obtained analysis was done. The study revealed that most of the student teachers of Pune city had heard about web 2 tools but were unaware of how it could be used in teaching learning process. The program was found to be effective as there was a difference in their post test scores after the program was implemented. The qualitative findings revealed that Use of web 2 tools helps in knowledge creation, better interaction & communication; it provides flexibility in learning for the students they can learn at their own pace and it enriches the teaching learning process. Everyone felt that Adobe Flash CS6 was very beneficial for them as they learnt and got varied experiences and apart from teaching learning it also helped in skill development which is a necessity for the today’s teachers’ ‘It is a time consuming process & if technology fails then the lessons can’t be effective, from all the student teachers who participated in the program all were not comfortable using technology. Adobe Flash CS6 was useful but few student teachers could not use the software’