Reflections are welcome on settings that would foster training the new skills and would better accommodate modern learners, as discussed in today's session.
Hi Eduard,
First, I want to thank you for sharing such an interesting and diverse collection of videos and articles to provoke us, and for the great introduction.
Regarding how to teach “new skills” for “modern learners,” I wanted to address just one aspect that was mentioned, communication skills. It seems to me that with more opportunities and responsibilities to contribute to the social network, communication skills are more critical than ever before. Some random thoughts:
- There is a range of quality even in emails, tweets, and SMS-text. We need a good literary analysis to tell us how to provide guidelines to students to develop quality short-form communications. Articles like this might be a start: http://personalweb.about.com/od/tweettips/a/Writing-Good-Tweets.htm. But I suspect some scholars are already working on more definitive analyses.
- Rhetoric seems like a subject that is even more important today than in the past. All of a sudden, our opinions matter and we are expected to have and share them. How do we fit this back into the modern curriculum?
- Visual communications is more important than ever. I just sat through a morning of the worst Powerpoint slides known to man here at WMO, not that the talks were that good either. Students need to know how to communicate visual, maybe ESPECIALLY if they are scientists, not just in the arts.
- When did it become popular to just provide links and not your own comments? Providing a link is technically a form of communication, but what about the personal part of it. Is providing a link the new form of name dropping—contribution without substance? We need to teach how to make that personal and critical comment that sets the link in the context of the conversation.
- Long forms are still VERY popular, maybe as another form of rebellion against mobile device media, as you point out. The best selling children’s books since Guttenberg were the Harry Potter novels, which were hard to put your hands around if you bought the hard copy. Quite often, the most popular movies are ones that last 2.3 to 3 hours. Television epics can tell a story over years, rather than the traditional 30-minute situation comedy.
- I think we need to continue teaching long form communications as well. Students will be at a disadvantage if they can’t write a good article or some form of substantive and cohesive document.
Pat
Hi Pat,
I agree that providing a context to resources or links should be definitely a part of the Savoir vivre 2.0. Maybe the context is given by previous email or preceding lecture? And if we think about tagging, social bookmarking and folksonomy that is exactly what add a personal context.
You are talking about long communication. I agree it is avoided even when needed recently. However, short and long forms had reason to exist both in the past and now. What about haiku, aphorism or epigram? SHORT forms were popular in the past too. Filling the gaps on your own can be fun, creative and instructional as well.
Sometimes I have no more time than to click on a link, or maybe enough to explore a little myself. The link will be probably updated or changed soon anyway.
Maja
Hi Maja,
In proper Education 2.0 form (including the improper grammar), I agree with both myself and yourself.
You point out that communication and context building takes place just by tagging and categorizing, which is a cool thought. I hadn't heard the term folksonomy before, but I agree that it is probably a better approach than the elaborate taxonomies that were thought required before collecting digital artifacts.
And you are right that short forms have always existing (can we learn from them?) and that part of their power derives from the space they give the reader to evoke their own meanings, if they are written evocatively enough.
Long forms are for other things, making larger and more immediately coherent connections. For sharing more complex systems of personal knowledge. Seems like we both agree that it is needed for many things, or at least useful.
I think it takes more time to click on links than to hear your nice summary. Lack of time is exactly what bugs me sometimes about the plethora of insufficiently annotated links. If you just give me me a link to a 20-page document without enticing me to take the time to go to it, I am likely to skip it unless I have some compelling interest. But interest doesn't grow on trees.
I think we both agree communication is becoming even more important, and that the forms it takes are multiplying.
Here is a good link: http://www.wombania.com/wombats/#.UK0kG4bNl2k
Pat :)