Push vs Pull Models of Education - Web 2.0's Increasing Role

"Delivery of learning will not merely be in the classrooms but also via online and mobile delivery." - Doug Woods, The Push and Pull Models of Education

  Think about the picture below. What differences do you notice in the classrooms?

 

The first classroom shows a teacher standing at the blackboard calling on students to answer a pre-designed question, given the resources they used such as textbooks and in-class notes.

In the second classroom, the teacher is guiding students to find the resources they will need to answer the question posed, rather than seeking an answer that the teacher wants to hear. 

While reading a journal article about Web 2.0 use in the classroom, I stumbled upon terms I have not yet encountered which described the transition that's happening in classrooms:

The "push" education model refers to teaching in which educators give students resources and then have them complete tasks with a concentration on a certain purpose. For example, a math teacher tells the class, 'Today we will learn about multiplication because you will need to use it in the future.'

In contrast, the "pull" education model shows the teacher acting as the facilitator of the learning, while it is the students that find the necessary resources and actively engage in their own learning.  In my analogy above, the same teacher would pose a question to his/her math students, and have students use their classroom content and technology resources to explore, research, and create a possible answer or explanation to a phenomenon.

Web 2.0 technologies are at the forefront of the "pull" model of education because they are the vehicles that teachers will use to employ collaborative, reflective, and social practices. 

Stacks of paper that show student work will be a thing of the past - teachers will be utilizing wikis and e-portfolios that show the content online. The benefits include cloud storage which can be derived from any computer, organized and accessible documents, and the ability for students to comment and reflect on each others' works.