Create and Share

When it comes to technology use, today’s students are not the same as the students of 30 years ago. This is not nostalgia, it is fact. Today’s students have never known a world without the web, without broadband, without wifi, or even without cell phones. They are different.

They have grown up both knowing how to plug-in, and expecting to be able to. They now carry devices, smartphones, which allow access to unlimited sources of information and services. They expect to interact with the world using these digital tools.

Web 2.0 differs from the previous version of the web in that it is not static, but active. With Web 2.0 comes the ability to create content on the web and instantly share it with the world. Today’s students do that. Everyday. They create and share videos, pictures, and tweets. They post to countless services, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and so on, create and share.

My classroom practice needs to reflect that reality. I need to harness the energy, the creativity, the desire to share, and channel it into processes which create products demonstrating learning. And I need to do it in such a way that it meshes with, not conflicts with, my student’s existing abilities in these areas.

There is one way, however, that today’s students are not different than the students of 30 years ago. They are still impulsive, can still have poor judgement, and still have brains whose prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain responsible for decision making) is not yet fully developed. So sometimes what they do online is impulsive and not well thought out. Thus my classroom practice needs to include checks and balances to account for such behaviors.

I’ve been using blogs, wikis, websites, and podcasts in my practice for many years. But I feel as though they have always be add-on products, not built into the flow of learning. This is what I seek- the blog needs to disappear into the flow, becoming just another step along the path.