The age of social networking collaboration is upon us, but many teachers are completely unaware of its existence.
For example, Facebook is used pervasively by college students and provides a richness of contacts and communication with friends, family, social and work connections and former friends from high school and college. It is a place of powerful connections and constant inputs of new technology, new applications, new ways to connect and communicate.
However, most CCSNH faculty have no Facebook account, no idea of how it works, no concept of the richness of content their students experience daily before attending a flat, dull, hierarchical, sequential presentation of information in their traditional classrooms.
At NHTI, many faculty only know of Facebook as the subject of a presentation by law enforcement about the dangers of being too public with your private information. There has been no presentation of the power and richness of Facebook as a social networking tool that enables students to fully experience Web 2.0 tools that they will use in their work and personal lives constantly.
The lecture method of teaching developed during the Middle Ages when textbooks were hand written and so expensive that only the university could afford one for the instructor to use as the basis of lectures to the students. That archaic and ineffective method of teaching hangs on 500 years later, but the Web 2.0 era is gradually eroding ineffective teaching methods.
My son, who works as a Web developer in NYC, taught me how to use Facebook. He has about 300 friends in his account - most are high school and college friends and people he is networking with in his personal and work life in NYC. He is fully aware that networking is the way to connect with jobs in the Web 2.0 economy and is also using LinkedIn to build his professional network (http://www.linkedin.com).
A Vision of Students Today is a revealing view of college students.
In addition, Pay Attention reveals the richness of content in students' personal life compared to the lack of richness in most college courses.
With 13,000,000 people in his social/political network, Barack Obama's election is a very good example of the power of Internet driven networks. His campaign uses technology effectively to define his position on issues and raise more money and faster than any other candidate in history. His victory is in part a tribute to the power of Web 2.0 technology tools to communicate, collaborate and focus income and expense on states and issues that had the most influence on the outcome of the election.
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I think this is an extremely valid point, that Barack's campaign used technology and gained a momentum that could not be stopped. He was able to get his message out to so many people using technology, I received many messages and saw many ad campaigns on Linked In and Facebook, and saw few, if not any from McCain.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it our President can use these social tools to rally support, to call students to action but schools refuse to?
ReplyDeleteInternationally I would say some 80%+ of teachers have a Facebook account. My school has their alumni group on Facebook with just about 2000 members. These tools are so powerful. If you do not use them you are wasting time and money trying to make students go some place else.
Or Ruby team uses it to communicate. So does our Basketball, Softball, Volleyball,.... you get the idea.
These social-networks are powerful and can be dangerous if we do not teach students to use them appropriately. Are we doing that? Is your school doing that? Or does it pretend these spaces don't exist and instead compete for students time? These social-networks have already changed the world....the longer education holds out the quicker it will become the dinosaur we know it's going to be.