Students 2.0

This post has absolutely no educational value.

Things have been said about Students 2.0. Most are good, a few are bad, several are skeptical. No links needed (yet). You know who you are and where you stand.

On one hand, we have our supporters. Those who recognize that student voice is an important component in the educational process. Does anyone dispute that concept? (We’ll worry about implementation later.)

Our detractors. After all, we are not the norm. It’s not easy being the early adopters. Are we (and others like us) the only students who care enough about their education to write about it? Yeah, no arguments there.

The educational institution has been ingrained in my peers as evil. Homework, standardized tests, reading “boring” books, learning “useless” knowledge, and on top of that, teachers are of course out to get us. Trust me, they are all bad. Except the ones like Clay Burell. He’s the guy who linked all of us student “edubloggers” together. He understands the importance of student voice, and takes action about it. That, in my mind, sets him much farther apart from any other teacher or administrator with a blog, because on top of being a full-time teacher and “de-facto tech coordinator” at his school, he organized a global, student-run blog in less than a month. Don’t get the wrong idea, though. I disagree with Clay on a multitude of issues, only a few of which he is aware of.

I do digress. For 85% of students, school is evil. Before I’m accused of such, I’m not taking a pessimistic view here, unfortunately. The top 5% of students care about the education. The other 10% don’t necessarily care, but they understand school’s long-term value. Sort of.

That can change. I can’t speak for the group, and I haven’t even bothered to read our mission statement, but I know why I’m here. I want to change the students. The digital natives and the digital immigrants can continue to be at odds over one another’s methods. But when teachers see the change in their own students, they’ll figure it out.

Moving right along, we reach the skeptics. I love these people, because I am so much like them. Pragmatism and logic rule our world. They see a bunch of students writing a blog together. The first reaction: so what? Their second reaction: what a bunch of punks. Their third reaction is to bookmark our site and come back for more. These are the people we, as Students 2.0, desperately need to prove ourselves to. More than the gushing supporters, who gave us awards before we even launched. (But don’t get me wrong, we’re very grateful.) More than the detractors, who have already made up their mind: students are made to be taught, never the other way around. We need to show the skeptics what we’re all about. It’s time to deliver. (And I’ll be honest, Clay’s Twitter marketing blitz of our splash page bothered me. With no content and nothing to show, it created more skeptics than a month-long, whet-their-appetite launch would have.) These skeptics are the people I want us as a group to challenge head-on. We don’t need to preach to the choir, or come up with abstract, impossible, or improbable ideas. We need to find a happy balance–separating the wheat from the chaff. Like it or not, we made a splash, and we’re here. And now, the pressure is on.

Like I said, this post has absolutely no educational value. Take it with a grain of salt.