Ning in education: presenting as a first-generation digital native
Last week, I presented a session on Nings in education at the DeICE Engage mini conference. I made the same presentation twice (check out the materials under the Extras menu above). Fortunately (since it was my first time presenting at a professional development conference) I did not feel intimidated by the number of attendees. (Maybe that has something to do with all of that Speech experience...)
As I wandered my way through my introduction in the second session, I began to tell my colleagues about why I had an interest in social networking. I said I'm interested because I grew up with this long list of tools/networks. I had seen MySpace pages as a kid; I had jumped on facebook as soon as I was accepted into college; I watched as social networks were leveraged by people my age to coordinate protests in the Middle East. And after all of this reflection on what I've watched, experienced or learned from these tools, then it slipped: "So, really, I'm a first-generation digital native." From the back of my head: and you're among the first to take steps into the realm of educational technology with that background knowledge/perspective.
I kept spilling out more words that I simultaneously feared but also embraced as part of my identity: "I am one of the first coming out of the institutions of higher learning who can leverage a network to find information rather than keep everything I need to know to just myself." My intelligence lies in how I keep a mental Rolodex rather than writing my own encyclopedia. And I have a pressing instinct to share. There was really something big in this "Ah-ha!" moment, but I feared this self-analysis because of the way my audience would accept it. And also how quickly it all spilled out without much reflection on the matter as I was preparing the presentation.
I know that I will eventually run into educators who hold to education as being some sort of pouring of traditional knowledge into minds. Graduating from my undergrad, I walked into a field that was rapidly moving more towards skills rather than content knowledge. (My first job asked me to build and execute interventions that would help prop students up in their reading skills.) Of course, I was prepared to expect that students learn through many different intelligences, but I had never considered that an entire generation would be seen as almost entirely subscribing to what they could learn from their connections to their peers and hopefully knowledgeable experts and visionaries (rather than manipulative, self-interested leaders with an agenda).
I can say that it's a spectacular balancing act of deciding where I want to fall in my philosophy or approach to education: do we still need knowledge (in the case of my brother, a hard-working aerospace engineer / "rocket scientist"). Without his book knowledge, science and mathematics would never evolve or show where our collective knowledge has not taken us so far.
Or do we need to prepare kids to keep up with others/competitors who constantly accelerate themselves because of their networks and technology. There is no doubt in my mind that there is an expected benefit to speed in American culture, but with much of our knowledge then being only temporary, how long-lasting of a meaningful impact will an intelligence based on borrowing collective knowledge have?
While the presentation itself went well (I had lots to offer and spoke toward the interests of my attendees), I am left wondering a lot about what type of education or intelligence will serve students best. And the bias from what I grew up with in the world...
With all of that boiling on the back burner, I have to send a some big shout-outs to some of my guides through this process:
- Scott Weidig really helped me get a good frame and approach set for this session.
- Gary Anderson (a teacher responsible for my interest in writing and teaching English, now turned colleague) helped to frame writing's role is on a Ning. See: http://fremdamericanstudies.ning.com/ and http://fremdwritersweek.ning.com/
- Kevin Honeycutt who welcomed me into his Art Snacks Ning and then offered to Skype with me the night before the presentation... just goes to show you the power of PLNs. See: http://web.me.com/khoneycuttessdack/kevinhoneycutt.org/ArtSnacks.html
- Finally, my colleagues at my current school who recognized and trusted my passion for edtech as we developed a pilot Ning.
facelift: new media and changing purposes
Now that Speech season is over (well, sorta until we go to Nationals...) and major gradschool projects are out of the way, I've had some time to nurture my online presence(s). I have made a lot of new connections to trailblazers in education and educational technology through Twitter; my PLN has truly witnessed growth that I would never have seen had I not gone to ICE 2011. It's been a so far inspiring venture to see how quickly one person/connection becomes a node for other people to follow (or for other followers!). I can attribute so much of my own knowledge/growth this semester to Twitter that it has become one of my go-to topics to bring up during discussions in my human resource development and program development classes. (Seriously, PLNs, social media and Steve Hargadon have come up in just about everything I wrote so far this semester.)
Now that I've got a few new "toys", it's time to decide where I want my information delivered or broadcast. I used to only turn to English Companion Ning (ECN) to expand my knowledge base, but I now see ECN as a problem-solving network for me rather than a trends-delivering medium. I still contribute my thoughts and ideas to the discussions on ECN, but I have found more new ideas, tools and news from Twitter thanks to the shared interests of people I follow. For me, Facebook will remain purely social, with my Twitter streaming in (just for those friends that haven't ventured into making education connections there). I imagine all of that added activity/traffic will force some to stop following me, but I have also had a while recently to think about how dedicated I am to education, both professionally and personally.
I revamped the blog to serve a few needs I anticipate as I try to make a splash in the edtech world. I needed a new theme that took advantage of new WordPress features. So far, I've come to really like the WordPress CMS. There is a lot more customizability now that they have programmed in more menu, hierarchy and widget management options. Twitter needed to make an appearance here, especially to broadcast some of my quick-hit thoughts, reactions or contributions to online discussions. I added a space for my growing resources and ideas. I hope to start posting some of my lesson plans, job aids and reflections from gradschool. Stay tuned.
breast cancer, facebook and Big Brother
So, while I am sitting reading a bunch of suggestive "I like it on..." statuses on my facebook feed, I discover the source of the highly sexualized meme phenomenon. I was particularly interested in my search because I found no evidence suggesting an organization was behind this; thus, there is no one responsible for the "awareness"/education.
Now, I am all for effective attention getters, but mind you that I purposefully chose the word, "effective". Sure, the phenomenon had me searching for whether or not there was an iPhone hack (because I mostly saw these posted through mobile devices). People can share all they want as long as they understand their audience. To me, there is a definite understanding of the audience in some of what this campaign is trying to achieve. However, I am not "educated" any more than I was before I started tracking down the phenomenon. (Sorry, you rose my interest only for dismissal.) Like I said, I found no organizations whose websites I could surf. I was not lead down the path to further education. Just look at the homepage: http://www.nbcam.org/. Rather, I just got a lot of commentary of the further sexualization of the breast cancer awareness campaign. I'm left wondering where did this originate and why is there no forwarding to the real cause/awareness sites? If anything, the meme phenomenon deviates a little too far from the intended goal.
There is more to be said about the phenomenon because people may not understand the breadth of their audience. Enter: youropenbook.org. In your next browser tab, you now see that this meme phenomenon is encouraging hundreds of (mostly) women to publicly identify their sexual (dare I say) "preferences". When I was skimming through all those posts, I was shocked at how many were faces of kids that would be the same age of kids I am teaching in high school.
Enter: facebook/BigBrother. While I tried to post the openbook findings as a PSA to my own feed/network (which will never include any of my students), facebook immediately marked my youropenbook.org links as spam and refused to allow me to post them.
(How ironic, facebook, you don't want us to share what you're sharing about us?)
When I tried to tweet them through, my statuses were also removed within three minutes (even though they are renamed through a URL shortener!).
So, long story short:
I am a little shocked at the shock meme campaign itself: is there not a level at which this should also bounce back to, say, a major organization for breast cancer awareness?
Also, facebook could be evil. Just sayin'.
reaction: The Social Network… or why my brain won’t stop running in circles
On the day that I go and buy an iPhone (thank you to all of the haters, because you'll be keeping me in line), I also go and see the only movie that has made me anxious even through the walk out to my car and the drive home. The Social Network is perhaps the most comprehensive reflection on a tool that is defining my generation.
You can bet that the first thing that I did was brag about my iPhone on facebook.
You can bet that the first place this blog post will actually be read is through my facebook feed.
You can bet that the second site loaded at laptop powerup was facebook.
And perhaps my biggest worry as I was driving home from the movie was:
What am I buying into?
The Social Network eerily reminds me of a lot of the shifts that Daniel Pink has written/commented about through the technology boom(s). The movie boils the facebook boom down to a few core messages:
- First, the movie leaves us knowing that a social network only forms around you if you have the networking skills. Sure, great fame, great success and great wealth can come from a social network, but you at the center may just be an observer watching the network form/work/interact around you.
- Second, I am overwhelmingly anxious about the cultural-economic phenomenon of us being driven by a boom of innovation in the social products of our times. First, we were farmers. Then, we were inventors and products. Now we are connectors... but how many connections can we afford to make before we are all as one?
- Finally, paranoia might set in when you think for a second that there can be a Plato's cave situation. Imagine you know you're contributing to a social network (or the Internet) only to find out that your contributions only populates only to give you a sense of trust to the system. In fact, you that might just be an appearance that gives you comfort in connecting with another person... is any of that interaction real? (Enter The Matrix)
No movie has made me want to give up social media so much.
And yet, I am driven to sit here and write about that and publish my thoughts to my own network.
What am I buying into?
reaction: Major Corporations Are Downloading Those 100 Million Facebook Profiles off BitTorrent
via Gizodo: Major Corporations Are Downloading Those 100 Million Facebook Profiles off BitTorrent.
Just when Facebook thought it might get the public pressure off its back... Pirates (and, for once, serving The Man) are beginning to harvest the information that people carelessly/ignorantly/unknowingly provide to the Internet's "public". This should be a noticeable change to the issues that general/casual/new Facebook users should be concerned with. Users need to change their mentality on what they do not want their clients, coworkers, bosses or family to see. Now, there is public evidence that demonstrates we need to be concerned with how our information can be harvested; reconfiguring/merged/etc into a bigger database; and finally how that "product" can be shared to any individual, organization or business.
Sure, the business world has wanted this for years. Oftentimes, Facebook would step aside and promote defaults that would feed advertising interests. Businesses could only pressure more. Now, Facebook has no control if they continue to offer defaults/settings that encourage the loss of people's assumed "privacy" -- the pirates will pillage your profile, and then they will work together with The Man to make a big profit selling whatever specs they can about you. This all makes for a great Orwellian account of dehumanization.
Such procedures have been around for years. (Remember our initial concerns over cookies left behind in your browser cache?) Based on much of what I am picking up in my Technology Ethics course at the moment (and thanks in most part to our textbook by Herman Tavani), there is little effort (at the governmental level, especially) to govern what our privacy entails. The continuing ethical problem in computing will remain: Is there a strong enough standard for how software/web engineers protect user privacy? And will that be enough to stop the underground from harvesting?
american mottos, etc
Generation Indecision: If I can't put it in a facebook update, I can't decide!
America's motto: "Good enough!"
Senior fears
Fear: One day, I will no longer use Facebook primarily as a distraction, but instead because I have to keep up the friends I don't see anymore. This one night of sitting around my apartment, packing and waiting for break is not helping my reminiscience...
Word got around my inner circle about someone (who I never expected) already missing me as I get ready to move out of the area for student teaching. Oh golly.
recent endeavors
1:1 laptops
+ project-based learning
+ student empowerment
+ authentic engagement
+ community outreach
= New Tech Network
recent posts
- Updating Fahrenheit 451: How do you turn it into a modern-day comic book?
- Why do *I* have to facilitate discussion? Facilitating book talks that start with student inquiry #uiwp2012 #PBLchat
- Looking forward to ICE: Some knows about evaluating technology use for learning
- Raising hand: How can I sign up?
- 10 Expectations that students should have for our schools http://t.co/YNy0FzkyzD Happy to have subscribed to many thanks to @newtechnetwork
- We can haz the Interwebs, please? Collaborative writing days are so shot when Comcast decides to show it is, in fact, the devil
- Here's to Monday: http://t.co/Ke7yup5Sle Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us....
- Wow. Seeing that again. Awesome. #ironman3 Definitely looking forward to this summer for so many reasons.
do you Diigo my bookmarks?
- Beyond the Bubble
- Authors Who Skype with Classes & Book Clubs (for free!)
- http://prolearning.canyonsdistrict.org/uploads/8/7/1/9/8719529/_skyward_online_quizzes.pdf
- Mirrorless Camera Comparison Review - Mirrorless Digital Camera Test - Popular Mechanics
- How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn? | MindShift
- A Focus on Distraction - NYTimes.com
- Reading Club | Digital Distraction - NYTimes.com
- The Do's and Don'ts of Picking Technology for Schools | EdSurge News
don’t be a hater
This blog and accompanying online resources by Adam Babcock are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.