Follow-up on Facebook.edu: Students, Software, and Emergent Social Practices
Created by Catherine Howell (University of Cambridge) on May 16, 2006
I wanted to follow up on a couple of points that came up in Stephen Downes's reply to my "Facebook.edu" post.
The first issue is about ownership. Cole made the point that students often perceive institutional software as "not theirs". I would add that there are (at least) two sides to this. One is to do with plain old functionality -- does the commercial or publicly available stuff work better? Does it have more critical mass? Does it tie in well with students' overall media use? The other, more important issue is to do with control, the management of personal and social identities, and shared social protocols for use of technology.
I think we have to accept that students are creators of content, as well as users and consumers. There is no necessary conflict between that statement and my earlier comment that "We need to challenge our students intellectually, not just confirm their existing (techno-)social practices". This was reinforced for me today, reading Tom Morris's comments about the BBC's plans "to build its website around user-generated content [...] with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com". Tom writes:
And we don't need institutional versions of them, squirrelled away in a CMS, either. Tom is right to say that degrees of freedom are needed in order to foster the creative use of information, and of technology. Intelligent content creation requires engagement. That's what we should be trying to foster in students. People should be able to use their existing favourite platforms and "draw in" the content that is interesting and valuable to them.
This latter point ties in well with Stephen's thoughts on privacy and recent media scare-mongering about students and Internet use. I am increasingly of the opinion that there is a major generation gap emerging between older academics and administrators and students. For the older academics, identity is protected through restricting access to it; by using the language of privacy and confidentiality to talk about it; by preferring password-protected environments. For the younger students, identity is protected by becoming your own publisher and marketer; the emerging consensus is that you control your image and reputation by editing (and circulating) it yourself. By speaking first, not last. This generation gap may yet end up being more socially significant than the much-heralded "digital divide."
The first issue is about ownership. Cole made the point that students often perceive institutional software as "not theirs". I would add that there are (at least) two sides to this. One is to do with plain old functionality -- does the commercial or publicly available stuff work better? Does it have more critical mass? Does it tie in well with students' overall media use? The other, more important issue is to do with control, the management of personal and social identities, and shared social protocols for use of technology.
I think we have to accept that students are creators of content, as well as users and consumers. There is no necessary conflict between that statement and my earlier comment that "We need to challenge our students intellectually, not just confirm their existing (techno-)social practices". This was reinforced for me today, reading Tom Morris's comments about the BBC's plans "to build its website around user-generated content [...] with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com". Tom writes:
"What the BBC don't seem to understand is that user-generated content is happening all around them, and that we don't need "BBC Blogs" or "BBC Flickr" or "BBC YouTube" for that to happen."
And we don't need institutional versions of them, squirrelled away in a CMS, either. Tom is right to say that degrees of freedom are needed in order to foster the creative use of information, and of technology. Intelligent content creation requires engagement. That's what we should be trying to foster in students. People should be able to use their existing favourite platforms and "draw in" the content that is interesting and valuable to them.
This latter point ties in well with Stephen's thoughts on privacy and recent media scare-mongering about students and Internet use. I am increasingly of the opinion that there is a major generation gap emerging between older academics and administrators and students. For the older academics, identity is protected through restricting access to it; by using the language of privacy and confidentiality to talk about it; by preferring password-protected environments. For the younger students, identity is protected by becoming your own publisher and marketer; the emerging consensus is that you control your image and reputation by editing (and circulating) it yourself. By speaking first, not last. This generation gap may yet end up being more socially significant than the much-heralded "digital divide."
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