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Education in a Networked Society

August 7, 2006 By Will Richardson

A few weeks ago, Danah Boyd posted a short blurb about a visit to the Lucas Educational Foundation Skywalker Ranch where she had some discussions about schools and education in a networked world. It’s one of those teaser posts that I wish she would have developed more fully because I found the ideas she listed there intruiging and somewhat challenging. Here are the lines that caught me:

…a small group of us came to the realization that schools need to start serving the tension between ego-centered, personalized, individualistic society and globalized society.

Networked society is altering the relationships between people, and communities are suffering because of the lack of cohesion, social norms, etc.

When we think about education, we need to stop damning technology and start engaging with the shifts that have occurred in the architecture of sociality.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this of late, trying to sort out how I feel on a personal level by the ways in which these technologies have changed my life. I wonder if my online life is better or worse than the more offline life I used to live, or if it’s just different. That’s what I try to teach my kids, at least, that just because something is outside of the realm of their current experience doesn’t make it inherently bad or good…it just makes it different. That goes for skin color, music, clothes, sexual orientation, whatever. I think changes make us suffer when we immediately react negatively towards them because they simply aren’t what we are used to.

Which gets us back to our favorite topic these days: DOPA. It’s nothing more than an attempt to damn the technology instead of engaging the tensions of a globalized world. We don’t want to do the tough work of understanding what the changes mean, good or bad. We just want to resist.

These are interesting times.

technorati tags:education, learning, DOPA, world

Filed Under: On My Mind, The Shifts

Comments

  1. Neil Rochelle says

    August 7, 2006 at 11:51 pm

    Will,
    I couldn’t agree more…..people just don’t understand teaching the technology savy student. We are not looking to replace human contact with technology. We still need teachers. I believe as I know you do however that their role needs to change. That technology is an incredible “tool”. For years, teachers talked about their “bag of tricks”. Technology is just one more thing to keep in their “bag”.
    So many schools are trying to expose their students to diversity, issues around the world, the newest information regarding whatever the subject being covered is- technology can make that happen quicker and cheaper. Students can talk to other students in other parts of the world or our own country about issue of diversity and tolerance. If students are studying a scientific approach, they can e-mail, or blog some of the top researchers at Harvard, Yale or Oxford. Why would we not want to provide those opportunities to students if we are able?
    I agree, it is new and new things scare some people. We need to continue to explore and educate.
    With respect to DOPA………all anyone had to do was listen to our president for 15 minutesthis morning and it should be no surprise how DOPA can happen in our nations’ capital!

  2. Graham Stanley says

    August 8, 2006 at 2:40 pm

    Here’s something I’m sure will interest you, Will:

    Spatial-Literacy.org(http://www.spatial-literacy.org/index.php?p=esociety) have devised an e-society classification system for the UK, which is based on university research and has 23 different classifications based on findings from the UK.

    The main groups are:
    GROUP A: THE E-UNENGAGED
    GROUP B: THE ‘E – MARGINALISED’
    GROUP C: BECOMING ENGAGED
    GROUP D: E FOR ENTERTAINMENT AND SHOPPING
    GROUP E: E-INDEPENDENTS
    GROUP F: INSTUMENTAL E-USERS
    GROUP G: E-BUSINESS USERS
    GROUP H: E-EXPERTS

    I couldn’t help thinking that it would be interesting / useful to devise a special classification system for educators to help trainers pitch their sessions.

  3. andrewodom says

    August 24, 2006 at 8:35 pm

    this is a topic i have debated with colleagues for a number of months now. i hold a M.Ed. with an emphasis in curriculum but find my initial ideas challenged by my love of social networking and my part-time role as ghost blogger. i do not believe that human contac is being replaced with technology nor is anyone trying to facilitate that. rather see an expansion in human contact to one that involved emotion and intellect. more students are having to describe themselves and their emotion through writing and media than ever before. we are raising students that are more aware of the world around them; the threats posed and the warnings made apparant. they are also pre-exposed to more information than ever before. i came across a 10 year old the other day that had learned many of the major european artists pre-20th century due to the Google logos that randomly appear when doing a search. i was dumbfounded. it is not an exact science though and i agree that much more research is in demand.

    drew.

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