• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

To bring learning back into school

September 22, 2011 By Anne 3 Comments

This is a mashup of a blog post and a retweet. I’m basically retweeting (Twitter users’ term for reposting someone else’s tweet because you think it’s worth your own followers’ attention) educator and author Will Richardson’s March 2011 TEDxNYED talk in case you missed it. At about 1:30 into Will’s 14-min. talk, he mentions 17-year-old professional cinematographer Mark Klassen in Ontario. Here’s Mark’s beautiful blog, where – along with Vimeo.com – he posts his work and gets feedback from fellow filmmakers all over the world. This is how and where Mark is consciously, actively learning his art – in social media, not in school (how powerful it would be to bring that learning into school for all students!), and in concert with people around the world who share his passion for film. Will quotes Mark as saying, “Sharing my work online has become a huge part of the way I learn. Those connections make it possible for me to gain a bigger audience, which means more feedback and more learning.” Will gives plenty of evidence in his talk of how school in the US is more and more about test prep, pointing out that test prep and learning are two very different things. And it’s learning and the joy of its pursuit that he wants for his own and all children (school, he says, should be about life prep, not test prep). Will finishes with a quote from social philosopher Eric Hoffer (1902-1983): “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” This is decidedly a time of change.

The body of evidence is growing fast that heaps of learning in so many subjects and genres is happening in social media. [Will says in his talk that, with these new media they find so compelling, our children have access to “2 billion teachers,” and it’s at least partly because they have that access to professional mentoring, feedback, competition, etc. around the world that they find these media so compelling.] So think about it! Since so much learning is going on in social media, it’s quite possible that – if we can bring use of social media like 17-year-old Mark Klassen’s into classrooms throughout the day and curriculum – we can bring learning back into school.

Related links

  • In a video interview, Arizona State University Prof. James Paul Gee “reminds us that testing drives teaching and that we won’t get genuine reform of teaching until we have genuine reform of our testing,” and – because so many of our children find videogames compelling – we might consider how testing works in games, Australian educator Nev writes, linking to the video. Testing, Gee, says, happens throughout games; it’s essentially feedback, which players seek so they know if they’re mastering the tasks of successful plan or of leveling up.
  • From Digital Media & Learning: “Why ‘democratized’ and ‘participatory’ learning are essential to educational renaissance” – a video interview with Diana Rhoten of the Social Science Research Council
  • “A student’s view of informal learning’s value”
  • “5th-graders teaching us about teaching digital citizenship
  • “Student’s tornado relief page on Facebook”
  • “Students’ PLNs: Great social media use!”
  • “‘Do no harm’: Message to educators, parents”
  • And, back in May ’09, “School & social media: Uber big picture”
Share Button

Filed Under: Literacy & Citizenship, Social Media Tagged With: educational technology, James Paul Gee, learning, Mark Klassen, school, Social Media, Will Richardson

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. 12-year-old New Zealander's mixed-media publishing business | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    February 25, 2014 at 7:47 pm

    […] how 17-year-old Canadian cinematographer puts social media to work for […]

    Reply
  2. About the (social) media revolution | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    November 27, 2011 at 7:24 pm

    […] young people who are leveraging the revolution here, here, and […]

    Reply
  3. So what good is social media? | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    October 28, 2011 at 9:39 pm

    […] “To bring learning back into school” […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • A solution for ‘awful but lawful’
  • New global service for getting nudes off the Internet
  • Then there’s the flip side of ChatGPT
  • For SID 2023: What youth want ‘online safety’ to teach
  • ChatGPT for media literacy training
  • Future safety: Content moderators and digital grassroots justice
  • Mental health 2023, Part 1: Youth on algorithms
  • Where did my Twitter go? And other end-of-2022 notes

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for tweets, posts on our Facebook page, and key commentaries from Anne on her page at Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.