Ongoing discussion and sharing about using technology in education.
Welcome to Modern Educator
Here on this blog I hope to get a conversation going amongst students, teachers, administrators, and parents about who, what, when, why, and where we should teach technology skills for the 21st century. I am technology teacher at Truckee High School in Truckee, CA and currently teach classes like digital media, e-learning, applications, and keyboarding -- yes...still important! :) Please Join the Conversation!
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My wife and I debate Facebook and its relevancy in our lives on a regular basis. We both have Facebook accounts (along with 1 out of every 10 people in the world) but only I use this social media site on a regular basis. I enjoy connecting with friends on a daily basis online from close by and with those who live far away. My wife on the other hand seems to still want that face to face contact with her friends and is not interested, nor necessarily comfortable with sharing her life with them online. Needless to say, it provides for some interesting and passionate conversations at the dinner table. Even more interesting when my 12 year old daughter joins in the conversation.
Some say Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, had a simple but revolutionary idea that resulted in 600 million people signing up for his companies web site, http://www.facebook.com/ - "where others saw the Internet as a network of computers, Zuckerberg saw it as a network of people." Time Magazine
He is reshaping the Internet into a system based on gathering information from trusted social connections versus random data providers. He is connecting people together to continue their daily lives online versus the Internet of the past where users were living virtual lives hidden behind screen names and avatars.
As I reflect on the recent article in Time Magazine, Person of the Year: Mark ZuckerbegI find this social concept of the web quite enlightening. One of my students told me after reading the article in my web 2.0 class that; "it makes perfect sense Mr. Halvorsen, I don't buy clothes that the fashion experts tell me to wear, I buy what my friends are wearing." Looking at that, I guess the fashion as well as all industries now have to move quicker and embrace this online social networking phenomenon because they can not wait for word of their products to spread from trade show, to the big city stores, and then to the stores in neighborhoods across the U.S. or the world for that matter. These companies who first have "our" friends talking about their products on Facebook and other social media sites are the ones who are most likely to succeed since Zuckerberg seems to have proven that three "likes" by our trusted connections online is worth more than a thousand recommendations by experts and corporations. I think we still want to know what the experts think; we just seem to want to hear that source of information through our friends network. Today, users of the Internet are expecting, possibly demanding, that the news come to them via social networks versus requiring them to go out and research it on their own. This transformation taking place, lead by Facebook and other sites like Google, is creating an entirely new set of skills and knowledge for today's workforce. Students today should be aware of this and be exploring what it is that they need to learn in school to be successful in this new tech-social era. All kinds of new jobs are popping up like social media management and programming web 2.0 applications.
Not convinced that this concept is a powerful one? Watch what takes place each minute on Facebook 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year all across the globe!
Why would students need to study digital portfolios and learn skills to use services like YouTube, Facebook, and blogging.......hmm....maybe we need to ask President Barack Obama.
In my Digital Media class students create original video content and learn how to upload it and share it on YouTube. But I take it a step further by having them explore how by using social media and sites like YouTube content creators can can develop and establish a fan base (subscribers, viewers) which can then be utilized for other purposes later on. I really encourage my students to move beyond looking at their education as "feeding" them the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in a career someday and start looking at it as an opportunity to create their own opportunities for career/advanced ed futures. The Internet provides an avenue to accomplish this like nothing in past history. I show them examples all the time of how everyday people like us create content that ends up having millions of viewers. I explain how that kind of marketing and distribution would have taken 30-50 years by radio and around 15 years or so by TV and cost thousands if not millions of dollars. Now, with sites like YouTube and Facebook anyone in the world with the access to the net and necessary computer/hardware can reach this size audience in 1-3 years and it is FREE!
In conclusion, I am trying to get my students to see that they can use these kind of skills and knowledge to create their own exciting and rewarding future!
Here is an example I showed today of a guy who remakes hit songs with nothing more than his voice. His videos have gone "viral" and today he was a guest on the Today Show on NBC. I can only imagine the opportunities he has awaiting him.
Have personal memories from sleeping in the back of my pickup truck in this town in June 1994 to awake to snow and brutally cold temps. Luckily the local baker/owner of 27 years in the downtown bakery let us in early at 4 AM to warm up with a cup of Joe.
So, when I saw this trailer I just had to share it. Great intro ideas for students in my Digital Media Class. Don't think I am up for the mt. bike race but it sure would be fun to visit and watch and then explore the trail on my own pace.
