Brave new world: learning to connect in new ways

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This video (3 in one) of the forum at Stanford University, "From MySpace to HipHop: new media in the everyday lives of youth", delves into a subject that I'm compulsively drawn to - social networking and the implications of these new ways of connecting. The questions that come out of these presentations are vital to our understanding of youth in order to evaluate and re-evaluate our teaching and learning programs. Some of these questions are:

  • Are we seeing an evolution to a new kind of engaged community?
  • Should we be enthused about the ubiquitous nature of digital media or should we be deeply concerned?
  • As educators, how can we spark the same engagement and motivation that we see on MySpace and Facebook?
  • Are young people changing through their participation with digital media?
  • How does this change their relationship to school and home life?
  • Why do they participate in digital communities rather than real life?

 Although the research study presented here doesn't tell us what to do, only what we need to know, I think that it's vital to realise what we need to know. Our familiarisation with Web 2.0 applications is only the beginning of a new direction in education. More importantly, we need to understand why we are doing this and what else we need to find out. One of the speakers points out that we may be at an inflection point where change is accelerating and old ways disappearing, where systems are no longer working, indescribable innovation is becoming possible. If this is true, then we need to understand it and we need to understand the good and the bad, and we need to harness it.

I've spoken about the significance of audience for young people. The first speaker makes an important point - Web 2.0 and what young people do within this environment is inextricably tied with who they make it for and with. MySpace and Facebook enable deeply social activity not driven by the technology itself. Network publics are an extension of youth's existing publics. How does this change young people's relationship to school and home life?

I'm going back to the question I was asked at my recent interview: how do we get to know adolescents?

This question is at the heart of the research presented here. The goal of the research is to understand these changes from the point of view of youth themselves. As the first speaker said, before we can design our own adult-centred agendas for education, we have to try to take young people's agendas and experiences seriously on their own terms.

Have a look at Heather Horst's submission to the website Digital youth research. I found this link on Hey Jude. Thanks.

Regional libraries

2nd Spider Web – 5

Originally uploaded by meeyauw

In search of a Web 2.0 presence at my local library, I eventually discovered an impressive array of things. I say ‘eventually’ because the link from the homepage was not outstanding in any way. Apart from clearly written explanations of Web 2.0 applications, as well as links in each section, the library boasted the following:

  • a readers’ advisory wiki
  • a training wiki
  • Facebook profile, including a catalogue search
  • Librarything-generated book cover images and tag clouds
  • MySpace youth forum (to meet online and discuss music, reading & movies)
  • Podcasts author talks
  • Links to Second Life resources and directory of virtual worlds by category (eg. for kids, for techies, for teens, for newbies, for artists, for 40+, etc.)
  • YouTube (list of popular video hosting sites

That’s a great start, and I think the problem of attracting users here is the same as in school libraries. There is a lot of great stuff there, it’s a matter of marketing to users.

The web will never replace human interaction


Restoration… Hagia Sophia scaffolding

Originally uploaded by annpar

Every day I’m reminded of the importance of the human presence behind the use of technology in teaching and learning. We need the good old-fashioned teacher to support the resource-based and student-centred learning more than ever. Before, during and after the research or learning process, we need, more than ever, the educator to explain, inspire, moderate, explain, encourage, supplement, support, explain …   Otherwise the joy and understanding will go right out of the student’s assignment and the student will loathe the assignment and loathe learning. These are my thoughts as a teacher, teacher-librarian and parent.

Here’s what someone else had to say  – scroll down to the halfway point.

It’s not a dichotomy – the old fashioned teacher and the 21 century teacher – it’s the same teacher.

#19 Roll your own


rollyo

Originally uploaded by tsheko

Well, I’ve saved countless Rollyos belonging to other people, and I was procrastinating my own Rollyo because I couldn’t be bothered gathering websites, but finally I’ve rolled a search engine to die for (not really). My search engine is a slick little thing entitled ‘literature reviews’ (catchy, isn’t it?) and I’m not sure how anyone is going to find it. It’s a conglomerate of 14 carefully selected reviewing websites. Actually, I’m not  sure how to access the borrowed ones I spent so much time saving.

#23 Don’t underestimate the e-book


the metamorphosis adapted by peter kuper

Originally uploaded by tsheko

I’m going to talk selectively about e-books. I was really taken by Len Unsworth’s presentation at a SLAV conference last year. It changed the way I viewed e-books. Of course, I’m focussing on only one aspect of the presentation, but it’s the bit that blew me away. In this context, Len stated that we should rethink what counts as literary narrative. This was poignantly expressed when he spoke about digitally recontextualised literary texts. Len pointed out that ‘electronic media are not simply changing the way we tell stories, they are changing the very nature of story, of what we understand to be narratives’. An example he used was Kafka’s Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) adapted as a digital story by Peter Kruper. You know the story – one day Gregor Samsa wakes up and finds that he’s turned into a cockroach, and the rest of his miserable life becomes even more difficult. Well, the graphic novel of Metamorphosis works powerfully, but the digital version takes it one step further. Instead of a static page, movement in and around the page, as well as presenting parts of the page dynamically to suit the narrative, give life to the digital story in a way that is new. There is so much more to the types of literacy required for the ‘reading’ than the static visual imagery of the graphic novel. I couldn’t agree more with Len Unsworth: we should not ignore the multimedia expertise of our children. Electronic media has much potential in teaching and learning of literacies, and in inspiring students in reading and writing.

#17 Library 2.0


IMG_2068.JPG

Originally uploaded by David Warlick

I haven’t slept well for the last few nights. I’ll tell you why. I haven’t been able to let go of a significant stuff-up in a job interview for the position of teacher librarian in a secondary school. It still astounds me that, when asked how I would engage students in reading if money were no object, I completely forgot to resource the collection! No mention of buying books! My library would somehow engage young readers bypassing a collection altogether.

I blame my present conversion to all things Web 2.0. Seriously, it’s almost as if a vibrant collection of resources is taken for granted. But, to be fair, when I analyse my giant faux pas, I would have to say that we all know, and have known for some time, that school libraries need a fantastic variety of all things readable, countless copies of every author, genre and style. But it’s not enough! One of the other questions that challenged me during the interview (an excellent question) was ‘how we get to know adolescents’ at our school. I think this is one of the most important questions, because if we don’t think about how we are going to understand young people in our schools, then we’re buying books for ourselves, then our programs are for a mismatched audience, our money is spent in vain.

During the course of this Web 2.0 journey, we’ve had a taste of the world that our students more authentically inhabit than we do, a world we have to force our way into perhaps, so as to have an insight into the question ‘how do we engage young people in reading?’ After crawling into Facebook and MySpace, feeling our way through Flickr photosharing, and other Web 2.0 applications, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that we’re living in a new information landscape, one where interacting and sharing understandings, views and knowledge is the purpose behind everything we do. David Warlick noted a graduate student’s comments about school in his blog,

“There’s not really an avenue at school for me to share, or publish my own stuff, or especially get feedback from people all over — That’s really the only reason I rush home to do MySpace so much.”

I think the reason I omitted to talk about the provision of books and concentrated on Web 2.0 applications, is that, like Will Richardson, I see this generation as a read/write generation. It’s not just about reading – it’s about reading and sharing opinions and ideas about what we’ve read with our friends.  If we provide books, then we should provide the opportunity for socialnetworking amongst students. Teachers should not be the sole audience. Young people care about what other young people think. This is what Library 2.0 is about – innovation, people and community building.

#16 Taste test


ellie eat icecream

Originally uploaded by Liquang

It’s a bit like piggybacking. Del.icio.us, that is. I jump on the back of a person I revere, a person whose blogs, wikis, professional guidance I’ve been following, and suddenly I’ve hit the jackpot! Somehow I’ve managed to legally ‘steal’ someone else’s hard work, time and mental journeys. Of course, I also develop my own social bookmarking links on Del.icio.us. It’s all fair. Although I have to warn those who think my Del.icio.us links are worth ‘stealing’ that my path to bookmarking is slightly crooked, and that they’ll be plunged into a randomness that only I can decifer.Tagging is magical. As far as I’m concerned, it’s like waving a magic wand. It has freed the outdated subject heading, that hallowed entity that demands strict adherence to its unflinching laws. I started using Furl before I tried Del.icio.us, but it doesn’t bring up previously generated tags for you to grab like Del.icio.us does. Like many new Web 2.0 applications, Del.icio.us can be pulled out of the hat of any computer; the memory stick is redundant (no viruses!)One more thing, before you fall asleep – if you customise the del.icio.us URL, eg. http://del.icio.us/tag/wiki, you’ll get a combined view of the most recent links tagged with the last word, in this case, “wiki”. I think I’ll play around with that for a while… 

#18 Grow knowledge


388px-Franz_Marc_028

Originally uploaded by tsheko

I’ve planted my wiki seeds and I’m waiting for them to grow. I know it’s winter so I’ll have to be patient. Once the exams and report writing are over, I’m hoping to see the miraculous organism taking shape and increasing in size. My art wiki is in its formative stage. I’ve started the growing process by adding pages within topics and raising questions for discussion, I’ve emailed art teachers within and without my school, added a couple of artists and brilliantly creative people for a bit of spice, and it’s just a matter of time before the living organism I call my wiki starts to mutate. My wiki will be a classroom without a room, a global community of critical readers, bravely discerning correctness and relevance of information, sculpting information into knowledge. It’s just a matter of time…

In his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson imagines the possibilities of the wiki in the classroom – students could create book report wikis, what-I-did-this-summer wikis, brainstorming wikis, poetry wikis, notes-from-class wikis, year six wikis, history-of-the-school or community wikis, formula wikis, wikis for individual countries they might be studying, political party wikis, exercise wikis… and so on. As Richardson says, wikis are ideal for ‘whatever topic might lend itself to the collaborative collection of content relating to its study’.

If the blog fits


Perfect Fit

Originally uploaded by riverxan

The search for the perfect blog …

Now it’s easy to keep the blogs you want rolling in.  With a little help from Google blog search.

Not only can you do an advanced search for a blog using keywords of your choice, but you can also create an email alert for these blogs, add a blog search gadget for your Google homepage or subscribe to a blog search feed in Google Reader. You can even limit the search for blogs created in the last hour, last 12 hours, last day, past week, past month.

Just thought I’d let you know.