Transcript Sociomedia - Anabiosis Press

Sociomedia:
The Transformative Power of Technology
Richard Smyth, Ph.D.
Library Media Specialist
Cathedral High School
Sociomedia vs. Hypermedia
The neologism sociomedia suggests
“that computer media exist for ‘social’
purposes.”
--Edward Barrett. “Sociomedia: An Introduction.”
Two Components of Sociomedia
Engagement --> “interaction with people”
Construction --> “students create a
product from their collaboration”
--Edward Barrett. “Sociomedia: An Introduction.”
Example #1 of Sociomedia
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Biology (Jamie Hutchinson)
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Issue: Global Warming/ The Kyoto
Accord
Partnered with an English class in
Germany (1998)
Used email to co-write persuasive letter
Sent to respective government
representatives
Won state award for environmental
education
Example #2 of Sociomedia
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English (Christol Murch)
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Issue: Rights of the Child/Universal
Human Rights
Classes argued for which right should
be most important in 21st century and
why
Created video of play or plea to present
during a videoconference with a class
in the Netherlands
Example #3 of Sociomedia
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College English (Richard Smyth)
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class created a text-based virtual
reality (a.k.a. M.O.O.) for local 5th
grade class
created allegorical educational environment modeled on The Phantom
Tollbooth
Example #4 of Sociomedia
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High School History (Logan Reichert)
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Class will create WebQuest on
Revolutionary War for Boston History
class
Target audience is Cathedral Grammar
School (across the street)
Intend to have real class of students
experience the webquest
Common Denominators
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Students collaborate with other students
within class and/or outside of class
(engagement)
Students create a product for a real-world
audience to experience
(construction)
Students learning how to be active citizens
Students dealing with real-world issues
(global warming, human rights)
Web 2.0 as Sociomedia
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New avenues for publication invite
“engagement” and “construction”
YouTube, Podcasts, Blogs, Wikis
Ease of use invites publication
Rheingold: “Participatory Media”
Participatory Media
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Students are comfortable with these
new media:
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iPods
social software (myspace, facebook)
blogs, vlogs and wikis
social bookmarking (http://del.icio.us)
Comic Interlude
Comic Interlude
Comic Interlude
Students as “Digital Natives”
“Our students have changed radically.
Today’s students are no longer the
people our educational system was
designed to teach.”
--Mark Prensky. Digital Natives,
Digital Immigrants.
“Digital Natives” (cont.)
“It is now clear that as a result of this
ubiquitous environment and the sheer
volume of their interaction with it, today’s
students think and process information
fundamentally differently from their
predecessors. These differences go far
further and deeper than most educators
suspect or realize.”
--Mark Prensky. Digital Natives,
Digital Immigrants.
Digital Natives (cont.)
--Howard Rheingold. “The Pedagogy of Civic Participation.”
Lecture delivered in Second Life (www.secondlife.com)
Rheingold quote
“Constructivist theories of education that exhort teachers to
guide active learning, to hands-on experimentation, are
not new ideas. And neither is the notion that digital
media can be used to help encourage this kind of learning.
What is new is a population of digital natives who have
learned how to learn new kinds of software before they
started high school, who carry mobile phones, media
players, game devices, and laptop computers and know
how to use them, and for whom the internet is not a
transformative, new technology but a feature of their lives
that has always been there like running water and
electricity. This population is both self-guided and in need
of guidance. Although a willingness to learn new media
by point & click exploration might come naturally to
today’s student cohort, there’s nothing innate about
knowing how to apply their skills to the processes of
democracy.”
Brain-Based Education
“Some have surmised that teenagers use different
parts of their brain and think in different ways than
adults when at the computer. We now know that it
goes even further—their brains are almost certainly
physiologically different. But these differences, most
observers agree, are less a matter of kind than a
difference of degree. For example as a result of
repeated experiences, particular brain areas are
larger and more highly developed, and others are
less so.”
--Mark Prensky. Do They Really Think
Differently?
New Literacies
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Need to expand the definition of
literacy
Electronic environments place
additional demands on and require
different abilities of users
“Literacy. . . .may be thought of as
a moving target” (Leu 11)
New Literacies
New Literacies
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Critical Literacy
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Media Literacy
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Participatory Media Literacy
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“Electracy” (read my entry at
http://en.wikipedia.org)
Critical Literacy
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The need to evaluate websites
Develop skills for determining bias
and authority
Similar to “Information Literacy”
Media Literacy
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critical literacy focused on new
media (video, images)
how to “read” images (commercials,
advertisements)
how to “write” with images
(videography, comics with Comic
Life – at www.plasq.com)
Participatory Media Literacy
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blogs, social software (myspace,
facebook), wikis
“. . . shifts the focus of literacy
training from individual expression
onto community involvement. . .
The new literacies are almost all
social skills which have to do with
collaboration and networking”
(Rheingold, quoting Jenkins et al.)
Electracy
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a neologism describing the skills
necessary to exploit the full
communicative potential of new
media
Electracy is to digital media what
literacy is to print media
draws attention to need for entirely
new term that avoids etymological
connection to literacy
What does all this mean to us?
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Teaching to the (Digital Native)
Student
Recognizing and responding to
radical changes in Information &
Communications Technologies
Using New Media for Construction,
Engagement and Civic Participation
Rheingold on Civic Education
“…I think we have an opportunity
today to make use of the natural
enthusiasm of today’s young digital
natives for cultural production as
well as consumption, to help them
learn to use the new production and
distribution tools now available to
them as a way to develop a public
voice about issues they care
about…”
Rheingold (cont.)
“Learning to use participatory media
to learn and speak and organize
about issues might well be the most
important citizenship skill that
digital natives need to learn if they
are going to maintain or revive
democratic governance.”
Changing Role for Teachers
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Students know more about new literacies
than most adults
Teacher can orchestrate learning
opportunities between/among students
who know new literacies
“In a student-centered, social learning
environment, this knowledge can be
exchanged, ironically, in a classroom
where the teacher may not know either of
these skills as well as the students”
(Leu 21).
Changing Role for Teachers
“Schools should require teachers to do action
research so that they constantly feel what it is
like to learn, to be reminded that real learning is
always frightening, frustrating, and able to cause
self-doubt, regardless of age or talent. If the job
and schedule make us think of ourselves as only
teachers instead of also as model learners, we
miss vital opportunities to make education more
honest, invigorating, and self-correcting for
everyone, adult and child” (320).
--Wiggins & McTigue. Understanding by
Design.
Changing Role for Teachers
“Effective use of games and other new
technologies is likely to be limited unless
educational institutions are willing to
consider significant changes in pedagogy
and content, and rethink the role of
teachers and other educational
professionals” (6).
--Federation of American Scientists.
Harnessing the Power of Video Games
for Learning.
Second Life as Educational Space
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Second Life is an online virtual world, a
“participatory social network”
Like a 3-D video-game interface for
chatting and collaborative world-building
“With [its] popularity…it was only
natural that educators would take notice
of the phenomenon and begin exploring
the possibilities of turning it into an
educational tool” (Appel)
Second Life in the News
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Wired Magazine (October 2006)
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USA Today (10/5/2006)
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“A Virtual World but Real Money”
New York Times (November 3, 2006)
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“At colleges, real learning in a virtual world”
New York Times (October 19, 2006)
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http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/sloverview.html
“It’s My (Virtual) World”
eSchool News (November 10, 2006)
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“Second Life develops education following”
Second Life
At the Howard Rheingold lecture at the New Media Campus
Second Life
Abaris Brautigan (a.k.a. Richard Smyth) by the fire
Second Life (cont.)
Map (close-up) with details of interface
Second Life
Abaris in the library near his “Electracy” book & terminal
Second Life
Sculpture outside of Parvenu Towers on Info Island
“Just Do It”
“So if Digital Immigrant educators really
want to reach Digital Natives – i.e. all
their students – they will have to change.
It’s high time for them to stop their
grousing, and as the Nike motto of the
Digital Native generation says, ‘Just do
it!’”
--Mark Prensky. Digital Natives,
Digital Immigrants.
References
Appel, Justin. “Second Life develops education following.” eSchool News online.
Available at http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/Pfshowstory.cfm?ArticleID=6713.
Barrett, Edward. “Sociomedia: An Introduction.” In Sociomedia: Multimedia,
Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Knowledge." Ed. Edward Barrett.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. 1-10.
Federation of American Scientists. Harnessing the Power of Video Games for Learning.
Available at
http://fas.org/gamesummit/Resources/Summit%20on%20Educational%20Games.pdf.
Leu, Donald J. et al. “Toward a Theory of New Literacies Emerging from the Internet and
Other Information and Communication Technologies.” Available at
www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/leu/.
References
Prensky, Marc. “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” On the Horizon 9.5
(October 2001): 1-8. Available at www.marcprensky.com/writing/.
Prensky, Marc. “Do They Really Think That Way?” On the Horizon 9.6
(December 2001): 1-9. Available at www.marcprensky.com/writing/.
Rheingold, Howard. “The Pedagogy of Civic Participation.” Lecture 21 October
2006. Second Life New Media Campus 5. Available
http://media.nmc.org/sl/audio/rheingold-oct-21-2006.mp3.
Wiggins, Grant and Jay Mctighe. Understanding by Design. 2nd Edition.
Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.
Contact Info
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Richard Smyth, Ph.D.
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[email protected]
www.anabiosispress.org/rsmyth
[email protected]
617-542-2325 X407