Teaching for the Future: Ep. 54: How Connecting Effects Conversation

Today's episode was recorded with my new iTalk. It's an attachment that allows me to record with my video iPod. I'm still experimenting with it, but so far so good.

Now that I'm using my digital still camera to do the video and the iTalk for audio I feel like I have covered all of my podcasting needs. With that in mind I'm going to be donating my old video/audio recorder to Alive In Baghdad. If you have any digital equipment you would like to donate, let Brian know because Alive In Baghdad could use some new/semi-new equipment. Even if you decide not to donate to Brian, I recommend you to donate any of your unused equipment.

News:

Teens 'turn to social websites': from BBC News.com: "The study for the Pew Internet Project involved 935 teenagers and found 55% of American youths aged 12-17 had accounts at sites such as MySpace and Facebook." Kids today are connected in a way we have never dreamed of. The study also finds kids are beginning to be smarter about how they share their personal information and how they use the web.

Social Networking Evades Schools: via think:lab: This post on the Fast Company weblog is talking about how excluding social networking in schools is leaving kids with out guidance. Maybe it is a good idea to have a policy that addresses the issue of social networking in school. This is going to be an issue for years to come and we need to start dealing with it. Just as you would talk to your kids about sex, drugs, and alcohol; you need to talk to your kids about social networking. If you don't address this with your kids someone else will.

IM/Chatting Affecting Language Wired: I was reading the Mr-Know -It-All column in the latest issue of Wired and found an interesting look at how text messaging/IM chat effects teens. Clive Thompson who writes the column argued that out fears are over blown. Where most educators and parents think chat is eroding student language skills he explains that this is probably not the case. In studies cited in the article researchers found that students made less spelling mistakes while instant messaging then in their papers.

He argues that it's due to teens not wanting to look bad in front of their friends. In my mind is all comes down to PUBLISHING. Students are not worried about being shamed for their spelling errors by their teachers so they are just less likely to proofread. Thompson's suggestion is teaching students about code switching, so they know what kind of language is appropriate and when it's appropriate. You can find this article on page 50 of the January issue of Wired.

Ads in captchas from In Over Your Head: I did not know what a captchas was before Julien mentioned them, even though I've been using them for a while. According to the Wikipedia a captcha is "an initialism for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University, is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human." Usually these are a semi-random set of numbers and letters that are used to cut down on comment spam on blogs. Recently ads and messages such as "drink coke" have been popping up in these semi-random sets. This seems indicative to the fact that people are learning to block out ads.

Because we can tune out these ads, advertisers are trying hard to slide their messages past our defenses. This worries me because I have a feeling that students who have learned to block out information may begin to tune out messages in the classroom. To your average 16-year-old information from a teacher can seem analogous to a commercial they don't want to pay attention to. More likely is that students have been blocking out their teachers since the beginning of time, but I do feel a trend.

DIY Cut and Fold Paper iPhone from Sneak Move:

This isn't news but I love a good paper project. I wanted to make my own paper iPhone, but Sneak Move beat me to it. This was just a lot of fun to make and will make for some funny flickr images.

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Thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music.

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Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching