For anyone who is in education, it’s impossible to avoid
references to the “six Cs” of 21st century education. In case you’re
not familiar, the “6 Cs” refers to the skills and knowledge that educators and
business leaders have deemed necessary for the future success of our children
in the world marketplace. The 6 Cs are:
1.
Collaboration,
2.
Communication,
3.
Creativity,
4.
Critical Thinking,
5.
Cross-Cultural Competency, and
6.
Character
For this blog post, I want to focus on communication. Lately, I’ve
been think a good bit about how we communicate in today’s digital
world, how that communication has changed since I was in school, and how we
best go about teaching communication to students who are “digital natives.”
To start with, I think there are some very good things about
our connected, digital world of communication. Social media certainly has its
utility. For example, I have 1,989 “friends” on Facebook. Through Facebook, I’ve
been able to reconnect with former students, friends and acquaintances from
high school, and relatives who live in other parts of the country. I’ve also
met people online who have common interests I never would have met,
otherwise. Here at HA, we have Skyped with job candidates and hired teachers
from as far away California, Minnesota, Utah, China, and Latin America. My
children still keep up with their friends from Tennessee, where we lived five
years ago.
Furthermore, I have almost unbelievable access to
information. When I first graduated from college, I subscribed to a half-dozen
magazines in order to get my news. I don’t subscribe to ANY magazines anymore;
I read them on my tablet and phone. In fact, my cell phone gives me access
to more information more quickly than I could have EVER imagined when I first
started teaching. Additionally, the novel I just finished reading was on Apple’s iBooks. I
didn’t have to go to the bookstore or even order it online. I wanted to read
it, and POOF, it was on my iPad AND my phone. I could have bought it at
the bookstore, or I could have ordered it on Amazon for much less money, but I didn’t
want to have to wait for the actual book to arrive. After all, I now live in a
world where I demand and receive instant gratification.
Similarly, I can give feedback to students and parents almost
immediately through email and through my web-based Google Classroom. My
students in my AP Economics class have a free, online textbook, with links to
relevant primary sources and websites, and I can post announcements and changes
to my students in real-time, after they leave my classroom. I have to say, as a
teacher, it’s pretty awesome.
So, I suppose all of this is good – or at least it’s not bad.
But I can’t help but think that in the history of mankind, we have never been so
connected, yet, so disconnected. I find myself asking the question: “Is the
communication in which our children are engaged authentic.” For example, have you noticed that when you go on
vacation that our kids don’t seem to miss each other?
I can remember that when my family went on vacation, I
missed my girlfriend and my buddies. I couldn’t wait to see them when I came
home. Plus, my girlfriend and I would spend hours and hours on the phone,
actually talking.
Not anymore.
After we returned from fall break this year, I asked my kids if they
wanted to get together with their friends, and the response was condescending.
“DAAAD!”, they snarled (with a hint
of an eye-roll), “We’ve been TALKING the entire time we’ve been gone!” There
was no sense of urgency to see their friends. In fact, they told me stories about
some of the funny things that went on during break in the cyber-world of
Instagram. It actually occurred to me that the kids tell stories of happenings
on the internet in a way that resembles the stories I’ve told about my
fraternity days. But the kids’ stories aren’t about wearing a goofy costume to
a date party or swimming in the campus fountain. Their stories are about clever
memes or “LOL” retorts.
Moreover, it’s not just the fact that our children are
communicating online, but the amount of time they are spending “plugged in” is worrisome to me. A 2015 Pew Research Center report indicates some
not-so-shocking data about teenage social media and electronic usage. 92% of
teens (aged 12-17) go online, daily, and 24% report being online “almost
constantly” (Lenhart, 2015) . Still further, 88% of all teens have cell
phones or smartphones at their disposal (Lenhart, 2015) , and according to the Common Sense
Media, teens spend an average of nine hours per day using media online (Tsukayama, 2015) .
So, I’m posing the question, to which I honestly don’t know
the answer. Is today’s communication real
or even healthy? To me, something seems very
wrong, but maybe it’s just a bad idea whose time has come? Maybe I am just
old-fashioned? Maybe, I’m like my grandparents who thought rock and roll (and
Elvis Presley, in particular) was the source of all evil in society? I mean, to
our children, Snapchat IS authentic communication. Our
children DO feel connected and DO feel they are engaging in genuine dialogue.
Just because I don’t think it’s authentic doesn’t mean it isn’t.
In my next blog post, I’ll delve into some of the research
on social media and screen time, and also talk about some of the ways we can
use online tools to our educational advantage.
x
No comments:
Post a Comment