The Media Commons Tailgate is part of a continuum of "Learning Design" events that TLT organizes, and as such, I wanted the focus of this event to be on learning and how technology can support learning, and not on technology and it's potential applications for learning. There's a subtle distinction there in what comes first, the discussion of learning or of technology. In my job, I feel that the former is much more important (the latter leads to a lot of shoehorning of technology into instruction). At the Tailgate, I'm very happy to say that just about every session, aside from the unabashedly tech-centric lightening talks, was decidedly learning-first, and was aimed at understanding students and making effective choices about space and technology design. With that said, here's some of my reflections on individual sessions..
Keynote
Many educators have a certain anxiety about technology that can be summed up with the question "Is Google making us stupid?". Many people that work in the field of educational technology would probably respond along the lines of "No, it just makes us think differently." Chris Long points out that this is actually a form of a very old question, dating back to the invention of writing. Obviously writing has been critical in the development of our civilization, and we haven't all become devoid of the ability to remember things. Society adapted and built on the new capabilities this technology provided, as it will do with the Internet, given time. But how that adaptation plays out, particularly how we emerge from the growing pains we're feeling right now in education, hinges on a deeper understanding of issues such as how social media impacts students' "reading, writing, and fulfilling life" as Long does an excellent job of describing. He points out that "many of the skills and abilities of traditional literacies remain the same...and that new possibilities and dangers arise with the emergence of the social dimension" of new media literacies.
I feel strongly, especially after the Tailgate, that developing an understanding what new media literacies are, and nurturing those skills in our students, is absolutely critical to our work in education. There's a fascinating moment during the student panel later in the day when a question was posed to students about where they learn how to use social media responsibly, and the panelists all agreed that they learned "from mistakes we make, and from each other", i.e. not from us educators. I took Long's keynote, and the discussion I had throughout the day, as a call-to-action for reforming digital literacy instruction. It's a conversation I've had many times with Ellysa Cahoy at University Libraries, and which I was happy to expand on last weekend.
Here's Chris' keynote in its entirety:
Keynote
Many educators have a certain anxiety about technology that can be summed up with the question "Is Google making us stupid?". Many people that work in the field of educational technology would probably respond along the lines of "No, it just makes us think differently." Chris Long points out that this is actually a form of a very old question, dating back to the invention of writing. Obviously writing has been critical in the development of our civilization, and we haven't all become devoid of the ability to remember things. Society adapted and built on the new capabilities this technology provided, as it will do with the Internet, given time. But how that adaptation plays out, particularly how we emerge from the growing pains we're feeling right now in education, hinges on a deeper understanding of issues such as how social media impacts students' "reading, writing, and fulfilling life" as Long does an excellent job of describing. He points out that "many of the skills and abilities of traditional literacies remain the same...and that new possibilities and dangers arise with the emergence of the social dimension" of new media literacies.
I feel strongly, especially after the Tailgate, that developing an understanding what new media literacies are, and nurturing those skills in our students, is absolutely critical to our work in education. There's a fascinating moment during the student panel later in the day when a question was posed to students about where they learn how to use social media responsibly, and the panelists all agreed that they learned "from mistakes we make, and from each other", i.e. not from us educators. I took Long's keynote, and the discussion I had throughout the day, as a call-to-action for reforming digital literacy instruction. It's a conversation I've had many times with Ellysa Cahoy at University Libraries, and which I was happy to expand on last weekend.
Here's Chris' keynote in its entirety:
My next post will be some further reactions on the student panel "Social Media and the Future of Student Communications".
Leave a comment