McKinsey on Web 2.0

I’ve read an interesting McKinsey article in the last couple of days regarding the growing adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the business world.

What’s that got to do with schools I hear some of you cry?  Well, there are some interesting parallels between those businesses successfully adopting and gaining benefits from Web 2.0 and how schools might benefit from the use of such technology.

Businesses gaining most benefit from these technologies typically have;

• understanding of the technology’s potential at the highest level in the organisation
• enthusiasm for the technology in the senior management team
• more than half of the employees actively using Web 2.0 in their day to day activities, they use them intensely
• adopted the technology because they want to do things with it, not because the IT department has ‘rolled it out’ to them, in fact it’s the other way around with users often pulling the IT department along
• changed the way their business works and is structured as a result

As many organisations are dissatisfied with the benefits they have gained from Web 2.0  as are satisfied, these companies don’t display the characteristics above.

Softease would certainly recognise itself as a company which uses this type of technology as well as developing solutions based on it for schools.  We use it extensively to communicate with customers and prospective customers (this blog, for example), to share product development ideas and to get feedback (if you want to know more, please let us know!) and to share knowledge within our organisation with people spread across the
UK and with colleagues across the planet.

What would a school gain from this, you might ask;

• allow the users (pupils in our opinion) to experiment
• get senior management team buy in
• get as many people involved as you can, teachers and pupils, collaborating and assessing each other’s work
• find you are doing things differently

If you’re going to do a pilot, make it a big one!

We think easy to use and adopt applications such as Honeycomb make it easy to get a wide range of people in and around a school involved, don’t forget parents and friends!  Honeycomb really does allow users to drive the use of ICT in many subject areas.  Add in its e-safety features, and you can remove many of the objections to Web 2.0 adoption in your school away at a stroke.

You will have to register with the McKinsey site, should you wish to read the whole article for yourself