2009 Student Technology Survey – Post 9

Posted on February 12, 2009 by barrydahl

Student Uses of Web 2.0 Tools

I added a new question for the first time this year in an effort to get at the level of usage of various Web 2.0 tools by students. Of course some students have used these tools because they were assigned to do so by one of their instructors, although that appears to be a fairly small phenomena at my school. This data helps debunk the theory that some people promote, thinking that all the students (or maybe all of Gen Y) are using these web tools all the time. Wrong again, Kemo Sabe.

This is a big chart, sorry about that. You probably want to view the chart full-size at Flickr so that you can read it better.

Out of 1,080 students, only 14 say they have used Delicious, and only 2 of them use it frequently. About 20% of our students use Gmail, but less than 20 people (17) use Meebo for instant messaging. About 3.5% of our students use Twitter. Only 6 of our students say they have used Second Life occasionally, frequently, or very frequently. By contrast, 73% say they use YouTube – so they’re clearly using some of these tools – butnot many of the tools that are considered more mainstream by the people I hang with. (click chart to enlarge)

The results here remind me of a poster I put together for use in workshops whenever people start thinking that everyone is using these Web 2.0 tools:

Original photo (CC) by ocean.flynn

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