Think Like a Teacher

The NECC  session on Classroom 2.0: Exploring the Potential of Web 2.0 with backchat at http://www.chatzy.com/610230759294 presented a good philosophical and “historical perspective” on what web 2.0 is and what it means. The panel had some diverse comments and angles (wise crowd or homogeneous group?). I was left a thought to ponder, followed by a couple of random thoughts from fighting with interrupted network connections and riding the bus.

From the session:

If collaboration is the key to wisdom and the cure for cancer, when will funding models catch up with the slippery nature of “ownership” in these collaborative successes? For example, university researchers must guard their results in order to demonstrate their successes when applying for the next round of grants. People who are truly creative have to balance the choice of ownership with the power of collaboration.  It seems that web 2.0 (and a global collaborative model) is, in a way, analogous to the Native American model of non-ownership of land/the earth. The different is that this time the interlopers are declaring that they DON’T own anything.  Creative Commons is there, sure, but what about ownership of the innovations that generate the income to fund the thinktanks, etc. Somehow there must be a way to make money “collaborate,” too. I wonder.

Random:

Doesn’t it seem ironic that a group as heterogeneously gung-ho about collaboration and openness as NECC attendees still rushes to get free doo-dads as fast as a six year old in the exhibit hall? There is proof that each of us has a dark side.

Everybody is so busy Twittering that Twitter is down.

OK- time to get some sustenance. Back tomorrow.

Amanda Lenhart of PEW with data re internet use and teens 12-17.

66% households have Internet, 22 still on dial-up, 10% not online at home. SOe populations very different.

What are they doing online? (lots of good) 94% research for school, 81% research info on entertainment info

58% have profile online, 77% of those 15-17. Girls bigger users.

Concerns:

• inappropriate contact (wanted/unwanted)
• inappropriate content (wanted/unwanted)- hard to determine the def for this b/c it is a community standard

She continues to list out other Pew research results. (not as much connection to normal motivation and behavior of teens, Anastasia’s approach). No assoc between stranger contact and hte content of your profile. Photo and profile, and being female are factors that do correlate to stranger contact.

Interet monitoring software (monitors, NOT filters) is related to lowering dangerous contact. More than half the solicitations were from people they knew/their age. 4% ave received “aggressive” contact (tried to make offline contact). Much is SOUGHT. They know what theyare doing (UNH 2005 youth and law enforcement study).

 more stats…..but you could read these in the study.

We should change the message re profiles to “you may be putting yourself reputationally at risk” instead of at risk for predators.

My battery is dying…so back to paper.

I am live-blogging from this NECC session.  All spelling erros, especially fo things mentioned but not spelled out for us are due to the real time nature of this post.

Anastasia Goodstein of Ypulse is profiling “tween” use of digital gadgets and how they use them:  texting teens 13-24 >50 msg /week. She follows what kids do as a full time job and blogs it on Ypulse. Draws parallels between these activities and what kids used to do on the phone: meeting developmental needs of teens.  Mentioned the sidekick multiple times. Most meaningful friends of teens are those with whom they communicate both digitally and F2F are the most meaningful friendships. “Hanging out” is digital- away from parents. Away from being “uberparented.”

MySpace and Facebook:  Kids are moving to FB. They all lie about age. demographic shift. See dana borg re demographic. Higher socio-econ moving to FB. Lower economic staying on MS. The sites have demographics. My Yearbook, Sconex, Tagged.com. Also see the virtual worlds: TeenSecondlife. Hobbo, Gaia.com and others are much simpler to operate than SL. Many are connected to toy companies. Lego is building one. by 2011 57% of teens will be in virtual worlds. Club Penguin and Webkins will grow up into them. They are not all geeks able to design an avatar.

These tools allow teens to express themselves and strong social activism concerns. They get validation from it. They are comfortable being public. Adults worry about their digital trail, but teens don’t see a problem with that.

Re schools: Teens are used to Internet to do homework. There is definite need for info literacy. MTV poll of teens showed that teens said greatest problem with loss of Internet for a week would be not being able to do their homework.(wikipedia)

 Her tips: talk to your teens about where they are going and what they do. Try the sites yourself. Be a guide to help them evaluate sources. safety needs to go beyond predators and inapprop content. Should include ethics and etiquette: talking about fair use, copyright, language vs txt. Make it a pre-req for afterschool computer use time. They need to know how marketers are “after them.” Marketing literacy. Talk about the personna you create online. Create and manage your reputation “brand” yourself and your digital trail.

Find the trailblazers in our field. Use them to get the word out.

For those of you who have never experienced NECC, especially teachers, picture Friday night HS football crowds, each with a laptop, sitting on everything available, including the floor.  The wireless has gone up and down four times in the past 20 minutes as I tried to start this entry. Just too much stimulation for this network! The hall of famous Texans statues here at the convention center in San Antonio is especially entertaining with people checking email amid bronze statues of Sam Houston and Katherine Anne Porter. But the spirit of the “wise crowd” (per keynote last night) is palpable. I need to head to the next session,but just wanted to check in. I am going to talk to some poster session folks.

The lightning has struck in San Antonio, and the sparks are flying. My presentation blog and hundreds of Ning discussions, blog posts, wikis, and web sites are ready to go for the weekend and next week. NECC is here. For those blogging the conference, the Spanning the Gap presentation has its own tag: n08s722. I will set up an RSS feed for any blog posts tagged for this presentation to show in the sidebar of that blog and here, as well.

For the next two weeks or more, the fires will light up the Internet, cell phones, twits, and every gadget known to techdom. Fortunately, there is no risk to human life or property, just wallets and brains.

I will try to blog some sessions during the conference, as well.

 In the meantime, I need to spend some time looking at the conference planner and deciding (or not being able to decide) which sessions are my top choices. I wish there were some way to slow NECC down so I could absorb it better. It reminds me of the old game show, Supermarket Sweep. The contestants run up and down the aisles for a short (too short) period of allotted time, grabbing everything they can of value. Then they run to the check out just in time to beat the clock, hoping they have selected the best (and most valuable) collection of stuff.

I hope I find some lobster in my NECC cart. What is in yours? 

Pearson and CoSN published a video on YouTube and elsewhere: “Learning to Change/Changing to Learn,” all about 21st Century learning and reimaging what education is.  I always have my suspicions about any commercial entity (especially one as HUGE as Pearson) publishing such a a video — and the inevitable product launch likely to follow).  I have to say, however,  that I love the words Stephen Heppel of the UK uses to describe students who use the tools of collaboration, synthesis, problem-solving, validation, etc. to LEARN, not memorize or capture a stream of facts. He calls them “ingenious, collaborative, gregarious, brave children”[my emphasis].

When I think about the willingness to accept uncertainty, to manipulate information that slips through the fingers like glycerin, to be wrong and keep on going, to proffer shared ownership in ideas, all of these ARE brave characteristics. Perhaps the new character education is about being learning-brave. This would make all the adults who “figure stuff out” using the web as  much brave students as the younger ones who do so in a formal setting or at home at night when “school” is over. What we need as more “brave” learners and more hero-worship of  that bravery instead of building fortifications of certainty and standards.

True learning IS brave. So eat your intellectual wheaties and build some bravery. This “land of the brave” is world-wide and moving fast. I know I need to keep up my strength, too, but I am very excited to see where we go — in even another year.

Some people pack bags or arrange for a kennel. I am fortunate enough to be preparing a presentation. See my musings about this process on the new (today) presentation blog. Please wish me luck!