In all reality - It's impossible to say. At this moment, students in schools like Sharon have access to more information than any students, at any time, in the history of learning. If knowledge is, in fact, power, then that makes our students among the most powerful people on the planet.
What will they do with that power? Do they know their own potential? Imagine all the time and energy put into facebook, myspace, or twitter, being redirected in a much more meaningful direction. Instead of just using the internet to "check in on friends" or to commit other forms of "cyber voyeurism," imagine using the net to become engaged, to discover, and to involve themselves in worlds beyond their own.
Do they have any idea where the net can take them? Just think of how many times you have logged on to the internet and safely surfed the same sites over and over again. Do our students do the same thing? Maybe the most important feature of a 21st Century classroom is a simple exposure to the possibilities.
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I wonder at what age students, developmentally, can start to be expected to use the Internet more productively -- especially, for example, to use things like Chatzy or blogging for academic purposes without being completely distracted by the social possibilities. (For example -- at the college I went to, there was "grafitti paper" in the women's restroom in the Science Library. The things people wrote there were almost universally appropriate -- to polite conversation, I mean, not what you'd generally expect on a bathroom wall. People wrote things that were very supportive, understanding, and caring, as well as occasionally playing with philosophical ideas there. Obviously, elementary-aged kids (in general) wouldn't be able to use a venue like that in that way. Would high school kids? Chatzy and blogging seem to me to have huge potential to be very much like the grafitti paper on that bathroom wall. How would kids use these tools?)
ReplyDeleteSteve, how do your thought relate to the KIVA post?
ReplyDeleteDennis