Tag Archive for ‘students’ at Students 2.0

Tag Archive for 'students'

YouthNet

Published by Lindsea on February 25, 2008 in Learning. 16 Comments

Last week sometime (I don’t keep track of days), I video-Skyped with the Korean Project Global Cooling club. PGC is the brain child of Clay Burell, with the aid of Bill Farren (who made the Did You Ever Wonder video). Their goal, in the words of Christopher Watson (the teacher helping coordinate PGC Hawaii), is to mobilize a global network of students to report on the efforts for sustainability in their communities, and also to connect them for further work together. The idea for the concert is to bring attention to the website and all the work and resources that will be posted there. We’ll be having a Hawaii-based concert for the cause in April. I was amazed at how easy it was to connect with people half-way around the world. True, their time zone maybe be a day and a half ahead of me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t come to their Project Global Cooling meetings.

What I really hope this connection between people all over the world evolves into is a place where teachers won’t have to do the connecting for the students. When we talk about a sustainable future, we don’t just mean environmentally. Places like Nervousness.org (an art project forum) are self-sustaining home bases where projects are formed between like-minded artists. There is no third party that sets them up, nor are there painfully difficult organizational problems to deal with. The artists do the art, exchange addresses, send the art, and then one person puts it all together. I see no reason why there can’t be somewhere for students to gather, talk, and create with their contemporaries (sans teacher).

We’ve all talked about how it’s time to stop underestimating kids, how it’s time to give us a voice. Out on the blogosphere front, things are definitely improving. But I look at things like Twitter (where the student population would be considered “endangered” at best), and, like Sean, I wonder why students haven’t all taken to the web. The answer is simple: where would they go? There is no single place for global student collaboration.

That’s why I created two places that I think will help students to self-connect.

The first place is a Twitter account called YouthNet. This Twitter account is a tool for students to find other students on Twitter. They can also use it to introduce themselves to the student network. For example, this would be my tweet: “@YouthNet I’m Lindsea, 16 years old, Hawaii. Interested in art, writing, photography, music, sustainability, film. skype=sonicyouthgurl”. In these 140 characters or less, I’m able to introduce myself, say where I’m from, and mention the areas in which I’m interested in starting projects. YouthNet would follow only students, so actually finding other students on Twitter wouldn’t be difficult. Student Twitterers are then able to advertise their projects (school-related or not) to other students.

The second place is a Wikispace wiki. The wiki is similar to the Twitter account in that it is a tool for starting projects and forming connections with similarly passioned people. There’s a page called World Connection where people list their name, blog address, Skype screen name, Twitter account, e-mail address, and interests. This is the starting point for networking. Then there is the “Talk” page, which basically serves as a place for discussion (obviously), and a very chillaxed forum for either casual or serious conversation. If the students choose, they can use Talk as the starting place for their projects. For brainstorming, collaborating, and swapping ideas, this is the place.

In the video chat I had with PGC in Korea, one of Clay’s students, Soojin, gives the example of a World Geography project. Let’s see how this project would work using YouthNet tools: So person X is assigned a World Geography project of her choosing. She decides to do it on exploring the anthropology of young people in different countries. Using YouthNet, she would first post the thesis of her project on the Talk page. Interested parties would then reply with their own input. She could also look through the World Connection page and contact the students interested in writing. She’d send out a mass email to all students interested, telling them in more detail what the parameters of the project are and the deadline. The students would write about their lives in the various countries all over the world, send her a couple pictures, and then person X would write a summary, and then self-publish the original stories and pictures on lulu.com.

This place that I’m creating is for students, first and foremost. It is platform for self-directed collaboration with fellow students all over the world, and it is the epitome of unschooliness and passion-based learning. The best part about this is that once it’s created and all the details are worked out, the project will be sustainable. That is, once it’s up and running, there will be no central leader. The students would have complete control. My youthful idealism has complete faith in my fellow students’ ability to lead themselves with world consciousness and integrity. I know that we’re capable of utilizing something like this to take the technological emphasis out of Internet collaboration, and use these tools only as a medium to crystallize all of our amazing potential.

Where do we draw the line?

Published by Sean "The Bass Player" on February 10, 2008 in Learning, and Teaching. 49 Comments

Draw the line I’ve just come out of a fairly quick skype call with Jen/Injenuity… I seem to have been in contact with her quite a bit recently. In the chat she put forward a few interesting questions, one stood out to me in particular. It brought up something I surprisingly hadn’t thought about before: “Does it seem strange to you to associate with a bunch of adults?” Strangely, the answer is no. When I think about it and put it in context, I realize that yes, it is a bit weird, but it still doesn’t bother me, and I don’t see why it should. Just because there is an age gap doesn’t mean that there should be a conversation barrier there too (of course there can be if you want there to be).

One of the other questions she asked which stuck a chord was, now that I think about it not really a question, more of an observation - “and I noticed on your blog that you mentioned you’re the only one of your friends that is interested in this stuff… you really haven’t connected with anyone in your area”. This is sadly very true. Student ed tech types are lone wolfs, we just generally don’t come in packs; I suppose what she was asking here ties in with the previous question. Online I need to be in contact with adults in order to be a part of the networks that I am so fond of because I can’t connect with a lot of other students. This is mainly due to the fact that it is outside of what the average student normally does online. The “you really haven’t connected with anyone in your area” part sort of answers the question that she asked right at the start of the chat “why are you up so late” (it was almost midnight at the time… it’s now almost 1:30am). I’m up so late because I really can’t seem to find many people in Scotland who are interested in this, especially people my age. So, if I want to actively converse, I have to be around when all the Americans are out to play. I guess I’m a wannabe American from the hours of 11 pm till whatever am. Actually, that’s a lie, I’m happy being 100% Scottish no matter what the time zone I end up living in.

The main thought that is running through my head when I look back over all these questions is, where do we draw the line? Or even, do we draw a line? What I mean in this respect is if we were to achieve our goal, if we were to have technology (in particular web 2.0 tools) widely used within education then would teachers actually welcome their students to contact them? And converse in the way I do with the adults and teachers I am connected with over my twitter network and similar things online. The reason I find this a difficult question to answer is that although in a traditional school environment this type of communication (especially that outside of the school walls) is discouraged (at least on a relatively large scale) we are proposing change to this system, and a big change at that. Does this mean that the principles associated with the current system should be changed? Or I should probably say, adapted? Should the door be left closed to student - teacher communication both in and out of school? Should it be left open? Or should there be some sort of compromise?

Personally I really can’t answer this. It may be because I’m not a teacher, and I don’t really know how I’d feel about the students in my class contacting me, and hanging around in the places on the web I have found so sacred at times. And let’s face it, there’s always going to be at least that 1 student sitting in that class that gets on your nerves that bit more than the rest of them… does this mean they would do the same within your own personal networks? And should all this mean that a line needs to be drawn somewhere with the use of these tools (at least in the classroom)?

So, back to Jen’s original question - no I really don’t mind networking and communicating with adults and teachers. It can spark up a good conversation from time to time (one which can be difficult to have with many teenagers my age), besides, it also proves that teachers actually don’t live in school. The question I’m now left wondering about though is this: would you be comfortable sharing your networks if there were more of us around? Because if/when classes of students become connected with you it may not necessarily be for the same reasons I connect with you. It would be a part of their classroom learning, and students don’t always participate in the way they should. In saying that though, I’m assuming you were comfortable with it in the first place...

Here’s the audio! - Call to Jen

The Bass Player

draw the line by alfarman on Flickr

What is learning?

Published by Lindsea on January 30, 2008 in Learning, and Teaching. 33 Comments

Learning is the process in which a person consciously takes their self farther away from ignorance. Ignorance is the lack of knowledge, the inability to understand something without guidance from an outside force. Ignorance can also be the willful act of not learning. As Immanuel Kant said, “Sapere Aude!” (1784 Kant). Dare to know. To take charge of one’s own learning, or the admission of ignorance and the want to change, cannot be done without courage and self-confidence.

Who are these outside forces that guide the ignorant? Those are teachers. In Modern Education, teachers take charge of our learning for 13 years, meeting our individual needs, and educating us in the subjects that have formed the basis for our world. Our teachers become some of the most important and revered authority figures in our lives, next to our parents. We learn from our teachers.

In general, learning is a popular thing. Students learn. It’s our traditional role. Books, and now the wonderful world of the Internet, serve our understanding. They satisfy our requirements. Teachers are generally eager to teach. Teachers are the guardians of knowledge.

However, learning is different from thinking. A teacher can teach and teach but they can never force a student to take the plunge into the vague pit that is critical, applied and abstract thought. A student (with the big brains that come packed onto the human label) can enter in the methodical algorithms that make it possible to pass for a very intelligent person. Yes, they may even be admired by all the right people, and regarded as a prime candidate for all the right schools in all the top places. But the real question is, do they actually think?

In the past, the leap from learning (and knowing) to thinking has been accepted as a dangerous thing. To all oppressed people, learning—accepting facts and dogmas—helped them survive, but thinking got them killed in an instant. My own fair sex learned all about what it had to do in order to live in a world lead by men. Until we started thinking, that is. The key factor in suppression of growth is knowledge without thought. The collective perception of a group of people jumping from merely learning to actually thinking is what spurs revolutions. In it’s purest form it is change.

As I mentioned before, the teachers in our lives have been pervasive authority figures. They have taught us all they could within their own human limitations. As authority figures, they have the responsibility to educate their students (give them knowledge that will help them survive beyond school), and also help them think critically, applicability, and abstractly. Being the catalyst to the thoughts of students is the most important role of a teacher, because, again, it is what changes the world.

Under what conditions can teachers retain their control, while still teaching all they can and most importantly promoting thought at every opportunity? What can lead students away from the dangerous trap of algorithms and into the belief-questioning probe of thought?

The teaching methods of “don’t ask questions, learn!” or “don’t argue, believe!” will absolutely discourage thought. But certainly complete freedom wouldn’t guide students toward thought, either. Total anarchy is never the answer, I’ve found through personal experience, because if learning is as I described (requiring guidance form an external force), then in order for students to learn, the teacher needs to draw on despotism. (A despotism that instead claims the gain of it’s charges, not its own personal gain.) No, I believe the best answer is, “Question, think, explore and dissent at your own free will, but listen (and obey)!”. A student cannot refuse the direct orders from a teacher to learn, but as a thinker s/he must question all the knowledge that s/he is accepts into his/her mind from the teacher or any other external source.

If in learning, a student applies critical thought and decides that that particular piece of information goes against their belief system and all ideas of truth, then I believe the student is still obligated to learn it. Ignorance is the willful act of not learning, and with ignorance there cannot come knowledge. This leads to the logical conclusion that without knowledge there cannot come thought, and without thought there cannot come change. The idea of a generation that does not fight to change what it sense to be wrong in the world is one that literally sends shivers down my spine.

But I won’t ever have to worry about that, because it is impossible. If we loosely use the analogy of the teachers being the powerful bourgeoisie and the students being the lead masses of proletariats, then we can see that because the bourgeoisie seek to take control over the proletariats, without providing a forum to speak through, the natural thing for the proletariats to do is join together. Once united, the now connected proletariats will now have “improved means of communication…created by Modern Industry [Modern Education]” (1848 Marx). Teachers created Modern Education, and through that, the students have united in order to voice their opinions. I don’t need to point out that Students 2.0 is a great example of what I have described.

In classic education, students’ voices were never fully heard because they were divided. Now, in neo-education, we retain the authority of the teacher, while making sure to provide opportunities for the roles of student and teacher to get lost in the greater goal of learning, and later, thinking; and second, to actually take into consideration the thoughts produced from those exercises. To teach in a neo-educational environment is to truly allow for and encourage thinking in the classroom, which means to lose the conventional boundaries of classic education. It means to obey the students’ wishes as much as enforce the teachers own. It is teachers and students learning, and thinking together, in a way acknowledges the connections and unity formed between the students and the world at large. Neo-education promotes learning both at it’s most basic, and most complex levels.

Original artwork by Lindsea

Global Villages

Published by Arthus Erea on December 11, 2007 in Leading, and Learning. 31 Comments

I live in two small towns. One, in rural Vermont, fits the classic definition of a small town: a quaint town hall and white church. Even more importantly: the community is closely knit. Whenever any interesting event happens, everybody knows about it within 24 hours. News spreads like wildfire; and our town town paper only comes out every month. We do not rely upon formal systems to spread the news. Instead, every person leverages their social network (the analog kind) to spread the news. Some people have immense networks (mayoral candidates) while others might only share the news with a couple of people. Regardless of how they learn it, within a week everyone knows about Mary’s new son.

I also live in another kind of small town. In this town, I control who attains citizenship. I am able to sculpt this village (network) to my exact tastes; creating a village with only those who interest me. This is a crucial aspect of our new networks—it is constantly engaging. How often have you been in a room filled with people but felt completely alone? This does not happen in our personal networks built online. Whether you agree with those in your learning network or not, they are always a source of a good conversation. Consequently, everyone in the network grows closer and closer into a tightly knit community.

While many attempts have been made to map the internet before, too many of them focus upon the what and the how rather than the who. One of my favorite maps of the internet shows each tool as a country. I believe this is fundamentally wrong, because we build our network around the people, not the place. It doesn’t take a plane ticket to get from Myspace to Facebook—it takes a couple of steps. Usually, most of your network will walk right along with you. Thus, it really just becomes a matter of walking down the streets with your friends with your network. Together, you form a small village, with location based upon similarities in interests, not on geography (both physical and virtual).

Just like in a real village, the news in our virtual (social) villages spreads like wildfire. From person to person, the news is passed. Never have I seen a more perfect example of this than with Students 2.0. In our first day alone, we got over 2,500 visits to our splash page. A significant portion of these visits can be attributed to the power of Twitter and our personal learning network. When we first launched the splash page, I watched as the tweets flew by—the village truly came through for us. The gossip certainly triggered an amazing reaction, which ended up growing exponentially.

After the original buzz on Twitter, the local (to our social village) news media came in. In our social village, this is the blogosphere. Seeing the amount of gossip and buzz happening, the local news media believes it merits a story. Of course, once one newspaper picks up the story, the rest follow. Shortly, over 100 stories were written about Students 2.0: bringing in even more gossip and conversation; the self generated P.R. cycle continues. Of course, then it is time to pull in a camera crew to produce a video.

Seeing the success of the video, even more people talked about Students 2.0 and learned about the project. Continually, the vibrations resonate through the village. A town bell has been rung, and everyone congregates on the town green, eager to hear the news.

The launch of Students 2.0 has been a great example of how powerful our social villages can be. I myself have learned a lot about myself, marketing, and the world through the participation in this project and the dialogue with my social village.

Going back to my real world village, I bemoan the location of my high school; it is outside of the village. While both are dependent upon each other, the school is not a part of the village. Consequently, all of the conversations happening within the village rarely infiltrate the thick walls of school. However, as I have seen with Students 2.0, our social villages can add immense value—both professionally and personally. By not utilizing this network, schools become stagnant; news flows slowly and change moves at a snails pace.

A critical step forward for schools would be to embrace the social villages of students and faculty alike. Schools should be developing portals and websites which take into account the social aspects of our lives. Even more importantly, once those networks are developed, the users should have the ability to welcome others into their village; too often we see systems which further isolate the school community from the larger social community.

This doesn’t need to be a radical step. Rather, a control system can and should be adopted—just as we selectively chose the citizens in our social villages (Twitter). Regardless of how this change is accomplished, it must come about; if schools continue to be separate from our social villages, our villages will continue to evolve exponentially while schools will stay rooted in the past.

The social villages we build around us—spanning various mediums—extend our mind and offer immense power which schools would do well to integrate rather than ignore.

The Future of Student Bloggers

Published by Sean "The Bass Player" on December 11, 2007 in Learning. 16 Comments

What happens when we student bloggers aren’t students anymore? A question that suddenly popped into my head a couple of weeks back, and it’s been niggling away at me ever since. I mean, what happens when the small amount of students who write blogs, with their own individual views on education, aren’t in school anymore? When they aren’t in the loop, when they have moved on to college or university or are just members of the general public? When they have no real connection to the matter at hand anymore?

The easiest way to answer it is the blunt way: If we don’t get successors then nothing will happen, the student opinion will be gone from the loop completely. Which would be a very sad outcome, seeing the pre-launch reaction to this blog. Most of the students on this blog will continue posting after leaving school, just as I will, but that’s not quite the same. We will be posting from a different perspective, we will have moved on, to college, or university, and some of us might just take the leap straight into the big, bad world. Seeing this new point of view does definitely have its advantages, but the opinions from inside the school walls, the opinions from those 20 or so teenagers in the classroom will always be the most important in my eyes.

So how do we get these successors? Well, it’s something I think this blog can really help with, I hope that the next generation of students can be shown what is possible, through their teachers, and be inspired to take it to the next level. This blog is, for me, a tool for both educators and students. Educators can come and hear what the silent majority actually thinks, and hopefully they will take those thoughts and find a way to incorporate some of what we talk about/suggest into their own teaching.

After all, that is how I came to be here. I was introduced to the use of web 2.0 in the classroom by my old English teacher Mr W. I realized how much it really can impact learning, and so I began my blogging quest! As for students, this is a tool that they can use to interact with educators, to see that the student opinion counts for something, and to provide a place where they are treated as an equal.

But what happens to us? the student authors bringing you this blog. Well, that’s not really up to us. It all depends on our readers and the value you give our views when we grow up, go to college, and (eventually) stop sponging off our parents and get jobs. At the end of the day, this will change our perspectives and almost certainly our views. The educators will always be here, as educators blogging about education, but the students won’t. We may still blog, we may even still blog about education, but we will be college students, musicians or businessmen/women blogging about education. I suppose the point I’m trying to get at is this: will this perspective matter to the edublogosphere?

Personally, the only time I can think of our future opinions being directly applicable is when we become parents. But does this mean our opinions will cease to count from after high school until we have children? I’d hope not, because education is universal. Everyone is constantly learning and has opinions on education, even those who have no connection to a school building. I suppose I can can relate it back to a T.V. advert that was running a few months back in the U.K. saying “if you don’t do politics, you don’t do much.” In a lot of ways if you don’t do education you don’t do much. The world is all about constantly learning something new and passing on your own knowledge to others, a school is just an institution that brings order to the process. Basically, all views on education should have some degree of importance, even if some have a greater value. It just depends who you believe is worth listening to.

As for us, it’s up to you, our readers. Do you carry on listening, and taking notice regardless of our position in society or do you move on and put full faith in the next generation?

Your call.

The Bass Player.

Photo by Misterteacher on Flickr

Students 2.0