Yesterday’s social networking report – part 2

Seems like that survey published yesterday about our younger folk benefitting enormously from hanging out in cyberspace has got people talking. How about this list from Google?

The titles are particularly interesting. Here’re a few I like -

• The Teens Are All Right, YOU’RE Falling Behind
• Study Says Wasting Time Online Is Actually Good For Kids
• Online Time Helps Teens Develop Social and Technical Skills
• Teens Learn Important Life Skills Online
• Parents Should Embrace Digital Age
• Study finds kids’ use of social Web sites is not waste of time
• Study Finds Teens Learn While Social Networking
• Digital Youth Study shows importance of kids being online

What are they all saying? In essence, the problem isn’t with the kids and their online explorations and discoveries, its with the parents.

It’s time to lay off the scaremongering and negativity. The online world is not full of predators and fraud scams. There is a lot of good in it and perhaps parents should join instead of criticising from the sidelines. Kids are more savvy than today’s over-protective parents give them credit for.

What does it mean for us educators? Freedom to do what we’ve suspected for a while now might actually work – go to where the kids are and work with them in their own space where they’re comfortable.

The report suggests that kids prefer to learn from their peers than from adults and parents. To me, it’s not the content of the learning that’s important here per se, it’s the mechanisms of learning we should focus on. What are peers doing to inspire each other to experiment with online tools and activities, how is the momentum created and sustained, what blocks are educators (inadvertently) putting in front of students that are not present in their online activities.

I’m not saying that education should move wholesale to the net. That would lose many of the benefits that face-to-face learning gives us. I am saying that the internet is a platform that many young students are comfortable in, so why not embrace it for teaching and learning purposes.

 

How to reach everyone?

I find myself asking this question every year as I grade exam papers that are supposed to be the summation of students learning for the year. Some students you expect to do well and that’s exactly what they do. Some you know just wont get there (despite your best efforts throughout the year) and indeed they dont.  Some end up underachieving and you’re gutted for them. Others exceed expectations and you’re thilled for them.

However, in many cases it’s the reasons why some students do well and others dont that are most interesting. A student who chooses to spend their study hours working in McDonnells (or wherever) to earn enough money to pay for the course they then dont have enough time to devote to is just heart-breaking, but you understand where they are coming from.  Students who do badly because they cant or dont want to study are even more heart-breaking. These are the ones you need to reach the most, and you need to reach them before it’s too late. After the exam is too late.

I’m a big fan of awareness. Just how aware are our students of what they are learning and how they are learning it.  The traditional model of education looks at the product only and not so much at the process. How does an 18-year-old know what is and is not important for the professional world they are graduating into, a world they are sheltered from in their college environment? How much learning happens outside of the classroom that is invisible to the teacher? How much of this are students not given credit for?  Like how exactly do students organise themselves for project group work? How do we know that person X in the group didnt do all the work and person Y didnt do much at all? How do we know if person X was the inspiration behind person Ys contribution that caused a grade jump? There are a lot of how questions.

Answers on a virtual postcard please while I go back to marking….

 

Do it yourself… you might even learn something :-)

We all know the value of outsourcing – getting someone else to do the work you should be doing yourself. Oh, of course, you pay the outsourcer a nice hefty sum based on how much and how well they do the job for you. Outsourcer goes off and does whatever he/she has signed up to do, happy that a cheque will be forthcoming. Outsourcee goes off and spends their time on something of more interest to them. But what if the outsourcee has previously entered a contract to undertake the work themselves. Can they then outsource it? Is it in their interests to outsource it? Hmmm.

Take the increasing problem of students outsourcing their college assignments. Websites offering to take this workload off their hands are touting for business. But, it’s a lose/lose situation so why bother. The student (outsourcee) doesn’t learn anything about the course they signed up for. The outsourcer cant very well put this one on their cv. If todays piece in the Guardian is anything to go by, the quality of the work is most definitely more trouble than its worth. Their Josephine scrapped a 40% in her outsourced computer programming project that she then couldn’t explain to her lecturer who kept having to chase her for the omitted components. Her history project ended up being plagiarised by her plagiariser and lands her in a date with her college’ disciplinary board.

So why are Josephines flocking to these dodgy charlatan websites? Here’s some speculation -

• Josephine is working 2 part-time jobs as well as her full-time college course and simply doesn’t have time for doing assignments
• Josephine is over-whelmed by her course and needs a get-out-of-jail card
• Josephine was out on the tiles the weekend / night / week / day / (delete as appropriate) before the assignment submission
• Josephine has no interest in her course, she just wanted to go to college
• Josephine’s parents have far more interest in her course than Josephine does
• Josephine can’t resist the temptation of an easy let-off

The thing is, whatever her issue, Josephine has voluntarily lost an opportunity for learning. Who’s fault is that? The even more ironic thing is Josephine would have been better off had she saved her time and her money and did the projects herself. She might even have learned something….!