Redefining social software in virtual collaborative experience

In choosing articles, I tried to both stick with topics that I found relevant to my impending project as well as my own future, and topics that worked well together. As an English teacher with a focus on educational technology, the first article I found was “Redefining Rigor: Critical Engagement, Digital Media, and the New English/ Language Arts,” by Jessica Dockter, Delainia Haug, and Cynthia Lewis. The second to find a permanent spot on my computer screen was “Examining Social Software in Teacher Education” by Richard Ferdig. The third article to pique my interest was “Technology in Virtual Collaboration Experience” by Elena Karpova, Ana-Paula Correia, and Evrim Baran.

All three of these articles, while each written and expressed very differently, did the same thing, they brought digital media and web 2.0 applications into the classroom and engaged the students with using technology to reinvigorate old ideals. The world is changing, there’s no escaping that, and, as it has always been, it’s our job as educators to prepare our students to become participants in this rapidly changing and growing world. As an English teacher, this may mean I’ll have to throw out reading and analyzing “The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” in favor of something a little (okay, a LOT) more relevant to both what my students know, what’s important to them, and what they’ll be working on and with in the future. This is why “Redefining Rigor” caught and held my interest so well, it’s about exactly that. A teacher changed up her curriculum after 13 years of teaching in order to engage and stimulate her students. They were still learning the same skills they would have in other English classes, how to read, analyze, write, interview, cite sources, and formulate questions and observations, as well as tackling many other skills not generally taught in your run of the mill English course. Delainia Haug, a veteran teacher in a diverse high school where 82% of the students qualified for free or reduced lunch, changed her classroom’s focus from a “literature-based curriculum to one focused on digital media analysis and production.” Again, she was still teaching the same skills, but was using a different medium to get better results. Students were challenged, with expectations placed high, first from their teacher, and then from themselves as they came to realize the final product, a group-made documentary, would be presented not just in front of their fellow classmates, but in a film festival, including other classes, family members, and people in their community. This observation shows two things I’ve learned throughout this year and this course, 1) students will rise to the expectations you set for them, and 2) when given a wider audience, students will push themselves harder to produce more quality work. Also, after reading the students’ viewpoints on the class and the coursework, it was easy to see that although they perceived it as the hardest work they’d done in school, it was also the most stimulating, and the most rewarding.
In “Examing Social Software in Teacher Education” we take a look at something our students are already doing, connecting socially on the internet via sites like FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, or anything old and new along those same lines, as well as cell phones and PDAs, all things students are already familiar and possibly borderline obsessed with. The question is; how can we as teachers use this to our advantage? Richard Ferdig points out that students tend to be incredibly social creatures, and will find ways to socialize whether or not they are given the chance within the coursework. So, why not find ways to make it part of the coursework. Using social sites to have students analyze, pose questions, and interact with the world is a way to incorporate both the students’ natural tendencies, and essentially needs, while also providing them with an educational experience they can take with them. The flip side of that coin is the now instilled fear of what vile and unsavory characters or information they could come across while on the internet at school. While I really don’t think there’s any way to keep our children 100% safe and sheltered besides locking them in the house, unplugging the TV, computer, and phone, and never ordering pizza, I do think there’s something to be said about educating them on making the right decisions, recognizing danger, and realizing when they’re doing something really stupid that could come back to haunt them.
The third article takes a leap from social networking to collaborating with others online via business partnerships and endeavors. We would often be told growing up that in the business world you might not like who you’re going to have to work on a project with, but you’ll still have to do it, and make it work. These days it’s also come to the fact that you might not like them, know them, or ever even sit in the same room as them, thanks to technological advances that have us collaborating with people hundreds to thousands of miles away. Using applications like Skype and Second Life make long distance conference calls a little more personal, and provides better interaction, which I’m sure makes for a smoother transaction, whatever might be going on. These particular sources may not be applicable to middle or high school classrooms every day, but could certainly be introduced, to give students a feel for what’s waiting for them in college and beyond.
The biggest thing about all these articles is they are all about getting students engaged in their learning and preparing them for what lies ahead. They provide teachers with some ideas and urge them to think about new and innovative ways to include technology in their classes. We can no longer be at a stage where going to the computer lab is a treat, it’s now become a near daily necessity to keeping students engaged and up to date with what’s going on in the rest of the world. To put it bluntly, computers aren’t just for typing up final drafts and putting together simple power point presentations anymore. They should be an integral part of the education process, as they have become in many businesses and professions.

Some specific ways teachers and instructors can apply this information into their lessons:
First and foremost, play around with the software yourself. Find out what social network site works best with your lessons, or maybe what most of the kids are using (I can’t recommend friending them, as I’m not sure of the implications that would follow) and become aware of what’s out there for them, what they’re seeing daily, maybe what dangers they’re coming up against that they might not realize is dangerous yet. The main theme here is to educate and engage, you’re relating to them through a common site, and educating them either on internet etiquette, or on a lesson you’ve put together using social sites. There are opportunities for math, English, history, and probably science lessons just using everyday profiles or communities. Or, you can get particularly adventurous and set up pages of characters from a book or history, with false information, and it’s the students’ jobs to find everything that’s wrong, and back it up with their own sources. Or, have the students create pages themselves for characters, which could be modernized or historically accurate.

Collaborating with another school to use software like Skype or Second Life to simulate a business transaction would be interesting. Students would have to think beyond what they know in order to interact and create a product with people they’ve never met, nor will likely never see, depending on the schools’ distances. There’s also the thought of using Skype to see what schools and people are like in different areas, or countries. Instead of just watching a video your students can ask questions themselves, in real time, and interact with a different culture.

Delainia Haug’s new curriculum where students study, analyze, and then create digital media is in and of itself a great example of what can be accomplished using technology and multimedia applications in the classroom. The purpose was to create a curriculum where students were engaged, thoughtful, and showed up to class, but she did something so much more. She created a sense of self-awareness, allowing students to think and create on their own, come to conclusions, and alter their own prior beliefs. They probably learned more about themselves, their culture, and each other in that one class than they had in all their previous years of schooling. I would love to be able to speak with her and learn how she devised such a curriculum, where she might have run into trouble, anything that would allow us to recreate what she was able to do.

My one concern with all of these ideas is that it does take a certain amount of money and equipment to accomplish. Our current state of affairs in education is not the nicest, and budget cuts seem to be happening everywhere, causing teachers to be laid off, class sizes to go up, and equipment to stay the same. We can have all the ideas in the world, but if we don’t have to equipment or software to make it a reality, what do we do?