A few weeks ago, I was looking at on-line articles to share with my College Comp II class. I found the one I was searching for and wanted to share it with them. I usually will link it to our class blog, Tweet it, and, once in awhile, I'll Facebook it too.
Then I noticed a huge variety of ways to share the story. I have often seen these before located in a sidebar to the story or at the bottom of the article, but I had no clue what most of those tiny little symbols meant. However, I wanted to know.
So I decided to print them out, divvy them up among my College Comp II students and have have them figure it out for me. Many of them had no idea what these odd little symbols meant either, but that was part of the fun.
I said it was just like working at job. Your boss walks in and hands you an assignment and gives you a dead line and you figure it out.
They wanted to know what the final form for presenting their findings would be.
I said, "Well, I'll ask the CEO." Then I sent Mr. Zutz a text asking him what he thought the final format should be.
As we discussed this, I kept checking my phone for a message. Every time I got a text the kids were on the edge of their seats. After a few minutes I got a text from Mr. Zutz with the final format: a speech.
I gave my class four questions to answer in their search:
1. What is it?
2. What function does it serve?
3. How can it be used in class?
4. What is one interesting thing about it?
What I found remarkable about what the students discovered was that all of these apps, whether they be Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, Edmodo, Newsvine, Stumble Upon . . ., was that I kept hearing these same terms in each presentation: "sharing," "instant feedback," "rating," "social," "ask questions,""contribute,"and "distributing."
As I listened to the presentations, I couldn't help but envy the digital world these kids are growing up in.
I know they are lambasted all the time by my generation that laments all the things we miss about the past . . . libraries, books, family dinners, long drives in the country, watching a TV show as a family . . . and then we realize, hey, we didn't really do those things either! Even if they did happen, they are never really the way we remembered them.
It's simply easier to pick on the up and coming generation for how they are different from us than to admire the new world they are growing up in (and we are growing old in).
I'm all for this new digital world. I don't miss the days of three TV channels (I like being able to record and pause live digital cable), being limited in my reading to what our rural library could import via the inter-library loan system (I thought amazon.com was the greatest thing until now that I have a kindle app on my iPad), having my news limited to the monthly heavy metal magazines I bought or the weekly subscription to Sporting News (I'd much rather surf their websites now and get my news updated minute by minute or - better yet - I can follow many of them on Twitter and get the news before the websites even get their information).
As I kept hearing those same words, "sharing," "instant feedback," "rating," "social," "ask questions,""contribute,"and "distributing,"it hit me just how much this generation needs to be connected to everything all at once, which is basically what these apps allow them to do.
I truly envy that.
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