This Internet THing - It IS just a passing fad, right?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Randall Webmail [rvh40 () insightbb com]
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 6:13 PM
To: David Farber; dewayne () warpspeed com; johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com
Subject: This Internet THing - It IS just a passing fad, right?

Why Professors Ought to Teach Blogging and Podcasting
The Chronicle of Higher Education  Information Technology
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i31/31a02202.htm
From the issue dated April 11, 2008

LINKED IN WITH...
Howard Rheingold, who studies the impact of the Internet on society and
argues that more professors need to teach blogging and podcasting to
students.

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Mr. Rheingold is teaching a course at the University of California at
Berkeley on virtual communities and social media. He contends that
students need to use various Web 2.0 tools to be good citizens because
those modes of communication are increasingly the way political discourse
and activism take place.

Q. Are professors using Web 2.0 tools in their classrooms?

A. Universities are knowledge factories. You're rewarded for creating
knowledge. But there's no incentive or reward for innovation in teaching,
at least at research universities. People are there to publish or perish.
… There's a real gap between what students need to know and the way
they're learning in school.

Q. What is an example of a way you're using these technologies in your
classes?

A. I have a wiki I'm maintaining on participatory media and education
(http://www.socialtext.net/medialiteracy).<http://www.socialtext.net/medialiteracy%29.>

Q. Your students are also learning to use Twitter, the microblogging
service, right?

A. There are huge possibilities for Twitter. I'm trying to get students to
use it.

Q. Why do students need to know about things like Twitter or wikis?

A. The feeling of a citizen who only passively consumes what's sold to
them by broadcast media is very different from someone who has posted a
blog item, or who has posted a YouTube video, or who has commented on a
newspaper article online. That's central to the public sphere today. In
the 21st century, civic education is participatory media-literacy
education.

Q. Don't students already know how to use all these Web 2.0 technologies?

A. There's a bit of a myth about the "digital natives." Yes, kids know how
to learn any kind of software without reading the manual and just clicking
around. But that does not mean they can sort through that information in
useful ways.

If we can get them to start using these tools for issues that they care
about — such as knowing how to use a wiki to advocate for a cause — I
think that would be a huge boost in civic engagement.

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