Think Like a Teacher

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.