Facilitating communication between peers using various internet tools is essential for a more powerful learning environment to be bred. Today, students are constantly engaged with each other throughout the day in various ways and for various reasons. One way to help bridge the social networking (in a personal sense) to peer communication (in the academic sense) is to allow students to have structured opportunities to do so.
I never really thought about how much students (and ourselves) are really consumers of the different technological mediums that are out there. I felt that Brennan made a very good point when stated, “Although young people spend a considerable amount of time online, they are typically engaged as consumers of media and have fewer opportunities to engage as creators of media, particularly as creators of interactive media.” This quote really stood out to me because I cannot say that I have ever been a creator of media. I, along with many of my students, tend to participate solely in these technologies and social networks but we never take time to integrate our own thoughts and peer collaboration to breed something new and exciting. Taking ownership of the activity helps to enhance engagement and will in turn motivate students to seek a higher level of understanding or depth to the item/project they are working on. The example of the two teens working together to create an animation video of one girl’s still images proves that point. When allowed to combine ideas, interact, and encourage each other’s work, students will often strive to hit higher expectations and achieve greater things than if we were to outline a consumer based project to them.
Another point that really stood out to me was the concept of creating a place where collaboration, communication, and feedback can easily be given between online users. One person pointed out that after they create a project on Scratch, they have a hard time soliciting feedback because of the sheer volume of users and projects created daily. After working so hard on a project, it is encouraging to know that others have viewed, critiqued, and at times appreciated the work that you have done. Encouraging our students to provide these things to each other is something I believe is imperative to this learning environment. One way to help facilitate communication in our own classrooms is to utilize some of the social networking tools that are already available. One way to do that is to integrate programs like Facebook (groups) or Edmodo. These sites are specifically designed to enhance interaction between users; and in the Edmodo setting, users are grouped in their classes which allows for a more structured setting. Teaching our students to create and communicate is an important part of how they will become successful lifelong learners today!
-Marie
Marie-
I was able to connect with your post for a few different reasons.
Your quote: “I, along with many of my students, tend to participate solely in these technologies and social networks but we never take time to integrate our own thoughts and peer collaboration to breed something new and exciting” made me think about my own interactions. It is sometimes easy to forget that collaboration can help to create new ideas that will help to motivate students.
I also believe the following quote holds a lot of value: “Teaching our students to create and communicate is an important part of how they will become successful lifelong learners today!”
This is so true! I think sometimes teachers forget about the “big picture” and focus on small day-to-day assignments, tasks, grades, etc. We need to be teaching them the skills necessary to move forward.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Thank you both for your feedback!
@Melissa-you bring up a very good point! When trying to express my concerns about having each student receive feedback on their work, I neglected to present the importance of global connections as well. Thanks for highlighting this point!
I like your idea that currently popular social networking tools can leverage learning more effectively. Feedback is one of the most important parts of learning processes and I believe feedback enhance a leaner’s participation, positive learning and critical thinking. Melissa, thank you for your comment about Scratch. I have only been browsing Scratch only for a couple of days and I was wondering how they manage the contents and feedback. Yes, many classes on campus is consisted of less than 20 students and I have been thinking that there is few interaction among students. I hope my instructors are aware of that and try different things for us like you are planning now.
Marie–you make an important point regarding the importance of peer feedback. The users of Scratch had a hard time getting feedback because there were so many projects to be viewed. But I disagree that we should seek peer feedback only within the class environment. Often, there are multiple classes at the same grade or multiple classes of the same course that can interact with each other. This fall, I am working with two other instructors to have our students interact with each other, so that we can make a larger learning community then simply the 20 students that are in each section of the course. We are teaching an introductory course for students in a particular program, and our hope is that by having them view each other’s work (a service learning project) across all six sections of the course, it will encourage them and broaden their ideas further then if they were simply presenting their work in their own classroom.