E-mail is SOOOO 20th century…
One of the things we are taught when we are studying to become teachers is to “meet students where they are” in terms of their learning styles and preferences. It does no good to teach at a pace that is too fast or too slow for the learner, nor is it a good idea to use materials or methods that do not directly address the way a person learns. This idea is at the heart of constructivist teaching–find out what motivates a student and start from there to build a teaching and learning system that optimizes a student’s opportunity to learn.
It’s interesting to consider this in light of existing and emerging technologies. As teachers of teachers, those of us in schools of education (if we practice what we preach) should be meeting our students where they are in terms of their learning styles and preferences. These styles and preferences were typically developed in a world of ubiquitous technology in their homes, in a world in which e-mail, the world wide web, and computers have always been there.
That’s why a recent article on CNET caught my attention. In “Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead,” Stephanie Olson writes:
The future of e-mail might be found on the pages of MySpace.com and Facebook.
Just ask a group of teen Internet entrepreneurs, who readily admit that traditional e-mail is better suited for keeping up professional relationships or communicating with adults.
“I only use e-mail for my business and to get sponsors,” Martina Butler, the host of the teen podcast Emo Girl Talk, said during a panel discussion here at the Mashup 2007 conference, which is focused on the technology generation. With friends, Bulter said she only sends notes via a social network.
“Sometimes I say I e-mailed you, but I mean I Myspace’d or Facebook’ed you,” she said.
There is a lot to digest in those words. How many terms did you encounter that refer to something about which you know little or nothing? Facebook? MySpace? Podcast? Mashup? Social networks? Does this suggest that your students–the ones in your university classes, studying to become teachers–know about something very important that you don’t? Read on:
“If I’m talking to any friends it’s through a social network,” said Asheem Badshah, a teenaged president of Scriptovia.com, an essay-sharing site that launched this summer. “For me even IM died, and was replaced by text messaging. Facebook will replace e-mail for communicating with certain people.”
Not only are some of the methods of communicating changing, but the devices used to communicate are also evolving. Facebook runs on cell phones. There are more than 15 billion cell phone in the world today and only a third as many computers, most of which are sitting on desktops [citation]. Most cell phones can capture video, send and receive text messages, and even work with e-mail.
Butler replied that she uses Facebook on her cell phone. “I need (Facebook) everywhere I go, but I log into e-mail only once a week,” she said.
More and more, social networks are playing a bigger role on the cell phone. In the last six to nine months, teens in the United States have taken to text messaging in numbers that rival usage in Europe and Asia. According to market research firm JupiterResearch, 80 percent of teens with cell phones regularly use text messaging.
Social networks may or may not be the future of communications–things change quickly these days. But that’s not the point of this post. The point is that we–post-secondary educators–need to be conversant with the tools that our students use and the learning styles that are fostered by them. We may tell ourselves that we’re using technology for teaching because we use Blackboard and send e-mail to our students. We may ask them to look up topics on a web page instead of a textbook or use a discussion board to post threaded comments. But to our students, this is probably neither engaging nor is it technology. It was all invented before they were born.
It’s soooo 20th century…
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University 2.0
I’ve been doing some reading on the concept of “Teaching 2.0”–a loosely defined response to the Web 2.0 concept that is transforming some of our most basic social, political, economic, and personal communication models through increased emphasis on social networking, collaborating, and sharing of information. Web 2.0 technologies–chats, blogs, IM, wikis, social networks (e.g., FaceBook, Del.icio.us, Flickr, etc.), podcasting, YouTube–have transformed the way a generation interacts and relates to the world at large. Advocates of Teaching 2.0 are working with these technologies to provide students with more access to primary source knowledge and to give them the opportunity to work with the context of subject matter rather than just the subject matter itself.
“University 2.0” is an outgrowth of the Teaching 2.0 concept. Practitioners are dedicated to using Web 2.0 concepts to transform teaching at the college level through enhanced course design, teaching methods, and student expectations. A question recently posted to eLearnSpace nicely summed up the need for examining University 2.0:
“…what are universities across the world doing about this information revolution? How are we demonstrating to our future students that we are not only a part of this human network but that we are leaders in the movement? Most universities were built and designed to function effectively in a single geographic location to a specific group of people in a print based environment. Now that we can communicate with people around the world instantly and access books, journals, presentations, videos, and more online, we should think of the world as our classroom. Future students understand this information age and expect universities to be on the front lines. As the world moves toward a global economy and information can be accessed from anywhere in the world, universities need to think more critically about how they want to proceed in developing leaders of this brave new digital age.”
Ken Yarmosh offers some additional insights into the effectiveness of University 2.0 with a post to TechnoSight. I was particularly drawn to this quote:
“University 2.0 or perhaps Education 2.0 is the ultimate way that we can ensure learning really never stops. I’d love to read the blogs or listen to the podcasts of some of the professors and teachers I had throughout high school and college…”
In the real world of UAF SOE, it has often struck me that we need to figure out some way to support our students once they have their own classrooms and are looking for current information about issues relating to their own teaching. How cool would it be to be able to read a favorite instructor’s blog on current practices, to listen to a podcast or view a video that kept the former student connected to the university and also provided him/her with current information? Further, what if that former student could respond with real world observations from his/her classroom that could enhance the instructor’s insights into teaching practices and expectations? They can, of course, if the instructor and/or the former student maintains a blog…
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