Teacher Bytes

There is a new book I plan on reading in the near future entitled The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein, an English Professor at Emory University. The author purportedly claims a generation of our young people (anyone under 30) are so busy with technology they are not reading, not engaging in civic issues, and do not have a solid work ethic. This is the opposite of an enlightenment expected with the coming of technology. This is from the review on Amazon.com. I will withhold judgment until I have read the book.

A blog post by Stefanie Olsen on CNET’s News.com has some evidence that might poke holes in Professor Bauerlein’s research. Some Silicon Valley teens gathered together at the Teens in Tech confab to share how they are using technology to start businesses and do charitable work. Here are a few examples of what some participants have accomplished. Anshal Samar, 14, has invented the fantasy-chemistry education card game Elementeo and hopes to sell 50,000 sets and is well on his way to becoming a millionaire before entering high school. There is also Sejal Hathi, 16, who founded Girls Helping Girls, a nonprofit group hoping to inspire young women around the world to bring social change in their communities. So much for no work ethic or civic responsibility.

What technology are these teens using? Facebook because of its better layout and professional look. They still prefer e-mail but have not caught on to Twitter. All of the participants worry about their privacy and take steps to protect it. While the participants admitted to not being able to read as much as they would like outside of school related materials, they did say they kept up with news online. One thing they do regret is the fact they don’t have as much time to build personal relationships because of their work or use of Facebook or other social networking sites but understand personal relationships are important.

Ms. Olsen does point something out that makes me wonder if Professor Bauerlein’s book may be premature. The attitudes about using technology responsibly is coming from parents. Silicon Valley is one of the technology centers of the world so its inhabitants are probably very tech savvy. This knowledge of how things work on the Internet is passed on to their children. In other words, responsible adults who understand how technology works are taking time to instruct their children properly and it works. The cover of the book says not to trust anyone under 30 (funny coming from someone who proably said not to trust anyone over thirty once upon a time) but when I read Professor Bauerlein’s book it would not surprise me that he makes another argument supporting the idea of the Technology Natives/Technology Immigrants divide.

I started using Twitter this past summer but very heavily in the fall. My original purpose was to Twitter my daily activities for my principal. This soon became impractical as I started getting followers. As much as I like to think I lead an exciting life this was getting a bit ridicules so I had to move that project to another place. My newfound friends, people like me who are involved with education technology, kinda became an extended family, support group, advisory committee, sounding board, co-conspirators, and possibly even a shoulder to cry on if needed . However, this past week I got to see two new sides to Twitter or any other micro blog you care to use.

First the good because when I coached I always talked about the positives first (unless the team was really screwing up). I had heard from either Buzz Outloud, or This Week in Tech (TWIT), I can remember which, about how Twitter was used to provide up-to-the-minute news about the wildfires in California this past fall. This seemed like a good use for Twitter to me and I put it in the back of my mind. This past Saturday night line of strong storms, with the potential to spawn tornadoes, passed through my area. Normally storms don’t bother me but after seeing what they did in Atlanta these made me wary. I did all of my bad weather preparations including tuning into the Weather Channel and pulling their website too. Don’t ask me why but I logged on to Twitter too. As the wind, rain, hail, and weird sounds surrounded my house through the night I kept banging away on my laptop, updating what was going on with the Twitterverse. Old friends kept tweeting me back constantly asking if I and my family where ok which made me feel better during the worst of it. Another thing happened that fascinated me later. I kept getting e-mails notifying me new people where now following me on Twitter. Was what I was doing that compelling?

On the bad side, Twitter became the hot topic at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Texas recently. The audience in a keynote interview between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg and journalist Sara Lacy got out of hand. Apparently both Zuckerburg and the audience did not like the line of questioning Lacy was doing. Lacy sensed the crowd’s displeasure and started getting defensive. What Lacy did not know was the crowd was getting worked by Twittering each other while Lacy was blowing the event. This event shows how Twitter, in the wrong hands, could become disruptive in situations such as classes. While applications like Twitter could be a benefit to educators, teachers will have to monitor what students are doing if they have those laptops, cellphones, and iPhones out.

Today I got an e-mail from Pownce announcing the micro blog is now out of beta and open for anyone to use. I blogged about Pownce earlier as a way for teachers to share announcements and assignments with students, parents, and colleagues. I also use the popular Twitter which has proven to be an invaluable means communicating with friends and colleagues interested in education technology. However, Pownce has some features that I think could be more useful to teachers. Some of the features include:

• The ability to view videos and images in the notes.
• An improved calender to keep track of events.
• E-mail notifications of new postings, if needed.
• And my favorit, the ability to attach files which could allow teachers to send out necessary files to students and others.

One piece of advice, if you wish to keep your communications with your students and others separate then sign up for two accounts. You may be bombarded with requests to follow your postings and you to follow others. When this happens important student communications could get lost in the multitude of messages.