A Place to Consider Technology

If you are like me, and according to the Pew research group 81% who are my age are, may tend to be suspicious or confused by social network sites such as Facebook. Popular media has given us some very funny looks at how we (meaning those of us over 35 years old) view social networks. You can see references to social networks on YouTube and network television shows. Most depict our frustration or misconceptions, or love-hate relationships with the medium.

More often than not, social networks are viewed as a casual way to connect to others with similar interests. It is often innocuous, slightly silly, or even a bit bizarre. The power of social networks has been used to organize an impromptu snowball fight in Washington. After few mouse clicks over 200 people showed up for the big event. Unfortunately an off-duty police officer did not get the tweet or the joke. It has also been used to organize nationwide “Pants off Day” in Portland, New York, and Phoenix. Mass transit riders are treated to fellow passengers riding the subways in their underwear as if it was a normal occurrence.

But is there a more serious use for the power of the crowd? Can these tools be used to organize movements aimed at some social change? Maybe.

10ch (2009, March 11). Social Networks, 10ch photostream. Retrieved January 25, 2010

When governments attempt to shut down traditional information sources from within the countries borders, they often fail to understand the connectedness of social networks and the fact that these robust networks are designed to find pathways around data flow obstacles. In other words, if one network route is closed off the network looks for alternative ways to get the message out.

We saw this in action during the aftermath of the Iranian elections. Many foreign news sources were either expelled from the country or forbidden from broadcasting in the street. But local Iranians armed with smartphones were broadcasting their own video and text news reports. We were able to witness the events in real time as they occurred.

Even in a Myanmar, a country that has been referred to as the most isolated government in then world is unable to stem the flow of information through social networks. One can easily find twitter and blog “news” sites focused on the country. The country also benefits from the information sources that it is trying to block. After the 2008 cyclone that claimed more than 30,000 lives, it was the twitter bloggers from inside Myanmar that kept the world aware of their situation and organized relief efforts for those affected.

More recently, in the aftermath of the Haitian Earthquake, social networks were working overtime send out news of survivors and assisting family members in finding one another. At a time when the government resources were in shambles and traditional assistance was nonexistent, the social networks provided immediate relief in both information and aid fund raising. There is even a story of how an iPhone app saved one man’s life providing him with lifesaving first aid information while he was trapped in the ruble. He was found alive more than 60 hours later.

So why am I so resistant to joining the Facebook world. My father has been part of the social network for years. He posts, pokes, changes his status, invites friends. Who is he talking to online? According to the Pew group only 7% of his friends even know about Facebook!

I am not sure about the answer to this question. I may have to reconsider.

So is there something worthwhile in here?

What are your Online Presence, Digital Footprint and your online Lifestream? Increasingly our lives are connected to others, and by others, through the wired online world. These connections make up our online presence, digital footprint and our online lifestream. Could you go for one month without access to the web? One week? One day?

We all have an online presence. The digital artifacts about you and your life that can be found on the web through simple searches. By doing a simple Google search or a search of 123People Search you can find some of your current online presence. But this may not to be the entire picture.

A person’s “digital footprint” reflects how he or she actively participates in the digital universe, including use of the Internet and social networks, e-mail, cell phones, digital cameras and credit cards. Half of a person’s digital footprint is related to his or her individual actions, and the other half accounts for the so-called “digital shadow.” (John Gantz, IDC) Who is creating this shadow and what does it say about us?

Lifestreams are also referred to as social activity streams or social streams. These can include social networks (Facebook, Ning), blogs, Microblogs (Twitter), Instant Messaging (IM). Social network aggregators can collect and display your various lifestreams in one place. This can be thought of as your own personal RSS aggregator. Where could we find your lifestreams? How many unique streams do you have?

In this increasingly connected world we must be aware of and take care of our own personal lifestreams. I wonder what can be said about us through our digital footprint, digital shadow, and our various lifestreams?

The question of education and how we go about doing business is not trivial. There was a time when online learning, degree programs, certificates, and diplomas were seen as degree mills. They were viewed with skepticism by many and with contempt by a few. People joked with one another about “buying” their diplomas. But this is not really the case anymore.

Any serious college and university have some online presence. They offer face-to-face courses, online courses, as well as hybrid courses. It is almost impossible to find any university course that does not extend the learning experience with online interaction by students in a portal such as WebCT, Blackboard, Moodle, or Sakai. These same portals are finding homes in the brick and mortar high schools.

BestOnlineHighSchool.com lists 232 online high school opportunities for students in grades 9-12. Some of these virtual high schools have course offerings that the traditional school districts could purchase. Others are associated with school districts as an option for their regular student population. Others are independent public charter schools that mainly have an online presence. Most of these schools carry state accreditation so they can offer graduation diplomas.

Some recent studies seem to suggest that there are powerful benefits to online learning that are not being achieved through traditional face-to-face courses. Most of these studies specifically examined adult learning, leading some educational leaders to generalize these findings to adolescent learning.

So where will this move lead us 5, 10, 20 years down the road?

The past three weeks have been fast-paced, dizzying at times, frustrating, and inspiring. We have explored, used, and considered a huge number of collaborative tools that could helps us organize our own lives, stay connected to friends and colloquies, collaborate with peers, and just plain old waste time enjoying what the web has to offer in the way of diversions.

I hope that all of us have discovered something new and useful in the Web 2.0 world, either for ourselves or the classroom. We even had a chance to try our hand at video production – there are a few of you who may have missed your calling to become big time movie producers, but our students will be very lucky to have you in their classroom.

But now I reflect on the advantages in educational technology that we tend to think of as normal or expected for education today. We are all fairly confident that our schools will have either a computer lab or maybe even classroom sets of computers. We expect to be able to use document cameras, laptops, and/or data projectors to share presentations and media with the whole class. We expect that we will be able to communicate with many of our parents via email or text message. But let’s remember that this is not the norm everywhere.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has set a goal to give every child a chance to experience technology supported learning through their “give one get one” program. Basically asking the developed world to buy a $300 laptop and they would donate a second to a child.

And just this week Africa just received it very first broadband cable connected it with high-speed access to the rest of the world. That is the first high speed undersea Internet cable for the ENTIRE continent.

So now it is your turn. Reflecting on your journey over the past three weeks, what do you take with you as you all begin to make your way into the teaching career? What impact has this experience had on your perspective? What hopes do you take with you as you leave our classroom? What sense have you been able to make out of our wild ride through new technologies that are aimed at supporting creativity, collaboration, and communication?

So now it is your turn.

As we have discovered, there are a lot of online tools that support creativity, collaboration, and communication. It is not just about the 3Rs anymore but the 3Cs as well. One could get lost and overwhelmed in all these web applications and cool tools. With a clear focues goal in the learning of our studnets and the careful selection of online tools, we can truly support learning in the classroom with technology.

We have seen quite a few choices. There was;

• Sue Summerfords’s List
• Judy Brown’s list
• Zotero referecne library
• Delicious social bookmarking
• Voicethread community
• Rubistar rubric creator
• Webposter creator
• Dweeber homework collaboration

Could these collaborative online tools be useful to you? To Students? How?