Thoughts from Week One - Chapters 1 and 2

Notes, first discussion 

Hope they are helpful!

• To NetGen, t.v. is background noise
  • Chat or IM while watching
• Nature vs. Nurture
  • How much does our environmet shape us? Net Gen participates in technology more subconciously, but we can acquire the skills...perhaps become an "overlap" generation by using the technology until it becomes a habit
  • We're so accustomed to using the Internet, that reading this book made us want to "click" in it to get more information
• To NetGen, technology is like air.  They yearn for choice, but we tend to be overwhelmed by it and/or see it as selfish and wasteful (i.e. too many salad dressings)
• What if a teacher set up a backchannel for class? Something that the students knew the teacher would see?
  • Access issues: laptop classroom?
  • Or have 3-4 students be responsible for it each class?
  •  K-12 examples: cover it live, virtual field trips, booktalks, edmodo.com
  • Purpose of backchannel: sharing information about the session they're in, with comments being positive or negative
• What about other ways to share? Like cell phones
  • Hall Davidson cell phone presentation
    • www.discoveryedspeakersbureau.com/taxonomy/term/7
  • Example of a teacher who asks students to take notes on their cell phones and send the notes to him at the end of class
    • Teaches students that phones can be used outside of the social realm
    • Consider the idea that you no longer have to use the "voice" feature on your phone in order for it to be an effective communication and information-gathering tool
• Admin support for tech in education
  • "In the future, how we educate children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them"
  • "Teachers are asked to put right-brain thinking on top of a left-brained curriculum."
• Safety Concerns
  • Stanford Univ. course for parents on social networking
• Change in societal behaviors as a result of Net Gen