Archive for the 'web sites' Category

Sep 30 2008

Should we view digital natives in an analog way?

Published by Art Gelwicks under education, policies, web sites

Far too many of us have bought into the new chestnut of “digital natives vs. digital immigrants” as educators and administrators.   It does follow well with our habit of searching out a label for each face in a classroom; making them something we can count, measure, graph, and put on a PowerPoint slide. Unfortunately this sets up some drastic misunderstandings of the individuals within these groups.   I challenge you as educators and administrators to look deeper, gazing into the infinite variety that exists between 0 and 1 on this person-based number line.
To assume the members of a particular generation group posess an innate level of understanding because they are part of that group is stereotyping.  We would be shocked and incensed to hear the statement, “Oh, they don’t get technology because they’re old.”  How is this any different than, “This should be easy for them, they’re kids after all and you know kids and computers.”  It’s a fallacy that must be corrected or at a minimum recognized.
Students come from all backgrounds and levels of understanding.  We recognize this when it comes to core curriculum, classroom composition, even school lunch programs so why do we seem to have a blind spot to this when it comes to technology.  Is it fair to assume a student will pick up Spanish easily because they can speak English?  Of course it isn’t.  So why is it fair to assume a student will pick up blogging, video, online collaboration, and multimedia just because they use Facebook?
The only thing separating this generation from generations past is they lack the fear of unfamiliarity for the most part.  Their aptitudes are the same, they have similar strengths and weaknesses, and experience the same joys and frustrations as we and our parents did.  We must recognize this when working with them as teachers and planning for them as administrators.
There are no digital natives.  There are no digital immigrants.  There are students in all their infinite, wonderful variety.  Peel off the labels and discover what lies within.  Recognize they will all learn at their own pace, in their own way, the things that are important to them.  No zeroes, no ones, only students.

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Sep 18 2008

Through the Filter 09/18/2008

Published by Art Gelwicks under web sites

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Sep 16 2008

Through the Filter 09/16/2008

Published by Art Gelwicks under web sites

  • Yammer is TC50 Winner - This is a Joke? Right? - ReadWriteWeb

    I’m in complete agreement with this assessment. From an enterprise standpoint this thing is a nuisance at best and a serious problem at worst. Aside from having almost no value without some sort of a desktop client (I know there’s an Adobe Air one…ever heard of “locked desktop?”) to a design and interface that looks like a bad photocopy of Twitter, this may have won the day but it’s certainly going to lose the war.

    tags: no_tag

    • The reason Yammer was considered brilliant was that it had a “cunning revenue model”. Let me see if I’ve got this right. You use Yammer rather than Twitter to restrict the Followers to your colleagues. So you can discuss company secrets really securely. (That, by the way, was a joke!) You use your corporate email ID (Gmail, Yahoo etc not allowed). All that is free, so massive viral adoption. Then companies want to claim/control the conversation. So they pay for all users on Yammer with a corporate email ID.

      Yep that is cunning all right. Other words come to mind as well.

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Sep 13 2008

Through the Filter 09/13/2008

Published by Art Gelwicks under web sites

  • Techdirt: University Bans Access To Facebook; Claims It’s A Security Issue

    When uniformed policies such as these are enacted at the collegiate level it only raises the level of confusion for public and private schools.

    tags: facebook

    • Concordia University has banned access to Facebook on any computer connected to the university network via a wired connection. If you’re using WiFi, the university allows it. First of all, that seems like a really strange split. Why should it matter whether the connection is wired or wireless? Even odder is the explanation for this:


      The university has decided to implement these restrictions because of concerns that the continuing reliability of the Concordia network could be compromised because of spam, viruses and leaks of confidential information related to Facebook use.

      There are spam, viruses and leaks of confidential info all over the internet. So why ban Facebook? And those same issues face wireless users as well as wired users. The whole thing sounds like someone who was very confused overreacted to something in the wrong way.

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Sep 10 2008

Through the Filter 09/10/2008

Published by Art Gelwicks under web sites

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