Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Just do it!

“Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.”

—Daniel J. Boorstin

Web 2.0, Networks & Gen Y

“Putting organisations like that into a network instead of running them as walled hierarchies is a massive step. At the moment it’s only beginning to happen, and that’s just in marketing.

“It’s gotta be another twenty years [until things really start to change]. The people in their twenties now who’ve grown up with computers, they’re the ones who are going to do all this [web 2.0] stuff naturally.”

--Dominic Campbell, via Interactive Know How

Related Resources

• Study Looks At the Psychology of Facebook
• Older Web Users Catching Up
• Social Media Hits Critical Mass

Change or Die

"To cultivate an opposition to change is the currency of the rich and stupid."

- John Steinbeck

<!-- ckey="45D2B83D" -->

Why School Administrators Should Blog

"One way of rebuilding trust is to use blogs to reopen, reconnect and be transparent again. Community building is built through commenting feature. Parents can start dialoguing with you. They don't have to leave their job to come to the school building, they can come and communicate meaningfully without leaving their house." (via MGuhlin.net)

--Dr. Scott McLeod, Dangerously Irrelevant

Social Media EDU: Moving from Theory to Practice

"As you may expect, traditional academic institutions have generally resisted the influence and increasingly pervasive presence of social networking activities in the life of their students, but recently the same institutions have had to look with new eyes at all of the aspects and consequences of these new modes of technological socialization sweeping the younger generations."

--Social Networking: Learning Theory in Action, Campus Technology

The Apprentice

"The Net helps you to not just learn about something but more importantly to learn to be something--to learn a practice, not just learn about the practice...[This is] a new kind of apprenticeship, a distributed one where the community mind becomes the expert."

~John Seely Brown

We, The People...

"Where Facebook holds a mirror up to my life and reflects all the relationships that are and once were through the simple binary of ‘friendship’, almost everybody I know on Twitter I know through Twitter, and each brings something different to the table.

Twitter germinates, where Facebook merely incubates.

It seems to me that this is an important principle of creating we. It’s not enough to just connect – and certainly not to re-connect – people. You have to achieve a reaction, something new and full of promise; a co-incidence of chemistry and mutual empathy or understanding.

Just as the value of money is wholly relative to that of what it buys us, a connection’s worth is measured in engagement." [link]

~Daniel W. E. Light, Idea IS the Format

21st Century Kids, 20th Century Schools

"The people who are in charge of facilitating schools’ transition to the digital global economy -superintendents and principals - are typically the least knowledgeable about the digital global economy. It's scary." 

--Scott McLeod

Get Smart

"Media literacy is not just important, it's absolutely critical. It's going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of mass media, or mass media is a tool for kids to use."

-Linda Ellerbee, Nick News

Move Over. Here comes Gen Y.

"The Net Generation has arrived! Boomers stand back. Already these kids are learning, playing, communicating, working and creating communities very differently than their parents. They are a force for social transformation."

~ Donald Tapscott

Generation Sputnik, Gen Y & Education Reform

50 Years Later, a New ‘Sputnik’ Crisis: The War of Minds: "Their [teenagers] world is one of total interactivity. They’re in constant communication with each other, but when they go to school, they are told to leave those “toys” at home. They’re not to be used in school. Instead, the system continues teaching as if these kids belong to the last century, by standing in front of a blackboard.

Education has not changed, and that’s a problem. It was a good system when I came through, but today’s kids have changed, and that’s the part that educators are not realizing. It’s the kids that have changed, and our education system needs to change along with them.

Again, they are the most technologically savvy group of kids we’ve ever had; we’ve got to take advantage of that."

Related Resources

• Iconoculture: Millennial's
• iGeneration
• K12 2007 Online Conference
• Social Media & Digital Learning Styles

Generation Fakebook

The Facebook Generation (NYT): "For young people, Facebook is yet another form of escapism; we can turn our lives into stage dramas and relationships into comedy routines. Make believe is not part of the postgraduate Facebook user’s agenda.

As more and more older users try to turn Facebook into a legitimate social reference guide, younger people may follow suit and stop treating it as a circus ring. But let’s hope not."

Related Resources

• Facebook & Gen Y
• Chatterbox for Facebook
• Inside Facebook Blog

Lifelong Learning & 21st Century Skills

"We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.”

~Peter Drucker (es)

It's About the Process

"I am interested in the process, not just the results"

~Maya Angelou

Culture Shift: 21st Century Teaching

This is a fantastic bit of research on the state of teacher education:

via newteacher.com: "The U.S. education system typically views teachers as independent operators, encouraged to be creative and expected to do a good job behind closed doors. Collaboration is rare. Worse yet, new teachers seldom see another classroom in action. Loneliness and lack of support further exacerbate the frustrations of beginning teachers.

In ASCD Express, Harry K. and Rosemary T. Wong write that induction programs that foster collaborative work and are structured around learning communities can be an effective means of mentoring young teachers.

Most young teachers are receptive to the wisdom of older, seasoned teachers. They crave the guidance of knowledgeable, confident administrators and coworkers. They also want their contributions appreciated and their ideas heard by expert listeners.

The newest generation of teachers is perhaps the most intelligent, talented, competitive -- and compulsive -- group this country has seen. It's a renaissance generation with great potential. Most are well-educated, thoughtful, confident, and creative. The grandeur of the future is in their capable hands. Let them work together."

Here's the deal: We don't drive the same cars we did a hundred years ago. Doctors don't operate on patients the same way they did a hundred years ago. Why do we continue to educate our kids the same way we did a hundred years ago? Isn't it time to embrace social media tools and find ways to integrate it into the curriculum to meet the digital learning styles of today's Gen Y student?

There's no reason that a teacher should feel isolated and left alone to figure things out on their own. Instead of blocking and filtering social media sites we should leverage them as a way to connect teachers to each other so they can share best practices, collaborate, mentor and support each other.

It's time to shift.