The 21st-Century Classroom

American classrooms are outdated. Slate seeks your great ideas for how to modernize them.

By Linda Perlstein

http://www.slate.com/id/2269307/?GT1=38001

This is a way to vote on how classrooms should be changed to meet 21st Century Learning
Thought it was interesting and would share...

My Thought on : Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life by Danah Boyd

Boyd’s main point in this article is, “that social network sites are a type of networked public with four properties that are not typically present in face-to-face public life: persistence, searchability, exact copyability, and invisible audiences”.  (p.1)

Boyd even defines them as:

1 Persistence: Unlike the ephemeral quality of speech in unmediated publics,

networked communications are recorded for posterity. This enables asynchronous

communication but it also extends the period of existence of any speech act.

2 Searchability: Because expressions are recorded and identity is established

through text, search and discovery tools help people find like minds. While

people cannot currently acquire the geographical coordinates of any person in

unmediated spaces, finding one’s digital body online is just a matter of

keystrokes.

3 Replicability: Hearsay can be deflected as misinterpretation, but networked public

expressions can be copied from one place to another verbatim such that there is no

way to distinguish the “original” from the “copy.” 26

4 Invisible audiences: While we can visually detect most people who can overhear

our speech in unmediated spaces, it is virtually impossible to ascertain all those

who might run across our expressions in networked publics. This is further

complicated by the other three properties, since our expression may be heard at a

different time and place from when and where we originally spoke. (p9)

She goes on to say how these four properties alter the social dynamics in which teens live. How teens are deeply rooted in how the site supports socializing among preexisting friends and groups. How teenagers are more focused on socializing with people they knew personally and celebrities that they adore. By socializing on the net, teens are taking social interactions between friends into the public sphere for others to witness. (p. 7) In choosing Friends, teens write their community into being; which is precisely why this feature is so loved and despised. (p.11)

Boyd takes time to describe why teens are attracted to social websites, but her main theme seems to be that teens are there because their friends are.  Also those that are not participating are due to parent or technology restrictions or that they think it is stupid for the most part.  Boyd seems to be saying that social networking for teens is just an extension of their current friendships.

Citation: boyd, danah. (2007) “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics

in Teenage Social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital

Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Link: http://www.blip.tv/file/2660656/    Social Networking 101-Teens View.

Kindergarten Blogging

This is a link to a blip.tv, if you cannot connect type in the search Building Communities through Blogging.  It is about Kindergateners blogging.  Looking at what we are learning in class and our own experiences with blogging I found this to be interessting.  Enjoy

http://www.blip.tv/file/3677708/

Youth, Idenity and Digital Media, by S. Stern

“The public attention is disproportionately paid to what teens disclose and produce online…yet little consideration is typically given to understanding why young people express themselves in these ways or how their authorial experiences are meaningful to them” (Stern, pg 95). This statement got my attention right away.  Working with teenagers on a daily basis, I am always seeking information and observing what they are writing, blogging or posting.  But to dig into the why factor…. is a whole different area, one I had not explored.

Stern’s main goal in writing was to bring light on the subject of why teens express themselves online. She does this research through conversations with youth who are online authors. Through these conversations she concluded that teens were finding online opportunities to learn about themselves and about self-presentation (pg 95). Teens were looking at their social world for cues about what principles to internalize, they were trying to go from “Who am I?” to “Who will I be?”(pg 97). Teens are also using this area to grow, and it is a very visual growth, with input from peers, self refection, critique and praise.  It is helping them to work out who they want to become. It may look different from what adults grew up with but the concept seems to be the same.

Stern also discusses home pages and blogging as a place for online journals, and that teens see them as personal sites.  Which are not much different from diaries, bedroom walls, notebook posting, they main difference is they are more fluid and ever changing allowing for reflection and input from their peers. And as graduate students we know self reflection a powerful tool, so if teens can develop this skill early on shouldn’t we be encouraging this? Teens also stated that they enjoyed blogging because they have an audience and what they say is important.  It was also a way to respond and reflect, manage and release feelings, searching for new knowledge and find where they fit in.  They are also learning responsibility to maintain and update their sites.

Stern stated, “When adults decide when and where expression is “pure” and how youths should engage in public address, they deny teenagers agency and neglect to consider the empowering possibilities their online expression experiences offer to them. In fact, recognizing youth authors as experts on their own experience is crucial if we hope to full appreciate how online content creation, adolescence, and identity intersect” (pg 99). This statement is enlightening, when as adults we say how things should be we limit the creativity of our youth, we stifle their growth.  So how do we merge the two? 

Most youth are introduced to homepages, social networks sites, blogging through friends and social groups.  Which is the same for most adults, I was introduced to Face book, because a friend told me it was a great way to keep in touch with old friends.

Personally, I enjoy the social connections online, building a homepage and blogging are very inviting to me, it’s the upkeep and time that restrict me.  If teenagers have this time and opportunity instead of stifling it, let us start to help them learn to protect themselves and still be creative, and let us start before they are teenagers who do not wish to listen to adults?  Any thoughts….

Reference: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/dmal/-/6

First Blog

Hello All,

This is the first blog I've created, hopefully it will be a lot of fun :)