DHarter, one of the educators participating in the K12 Online Preconference chat, said
A kid the other day said to me that he hates the term Web 2.0…makes sense, it’s 1.0 to him!
I’ve never considered that. Not only have these children always know a world with the web, but they’ve always been able to play with it. What a concept. I just got older!
It all brings us back to the relevance of teaching these kids from textbooks that are five years old. What kind of sense does this mean to our children?
Makes total sense when you think about it. It’s a bit like the Scots who don’t call the current queen “the second” because they never acknowledged the first Elizabeth. Or the fact that a new name had to be thought of for the “Great War” when an even greater one broke out a scant 21 years later.
Thanks for providing that perspective.
It sounds like the something I heard this morning. Kids may ask, “If you can’t find something on Google, does it really exist?” No more trees falling in the forest for these kids!
Thanks for the mention, David.
I too was struck by his simple comment. And I too felt old. But we keep learning because they still need us to help them sort it all out.
Interesting perspective.
5 year old textbooks doesn’t even seem that bad compared to some of what are being used in schools these days! It does seem quite astounding that we teach from resources most of us would never consider using ourselves.
Hmmm! I’m curious as to what Jenny means here. Is it Wikipedia? I use Wikipedia all the time. If you read this, Jenny, please expand.
David,
Long ago, Alan Kay said, “Technology is anything that wasn’t there when you were born.”
It should come as no surprise that kids are disinterested in the semantics of 1.0, 2.0…
There might be accurate factual information in five year old textbooks. A much larger problem is the use of textbooks at all since “Dick and Jane.”
Kids should read primary sources (re: books) written by poets, scientists, mathematicians, novelists or historians.
While trying to get some writing done at the local Borders last night, I saw a couple in their late teens canoodling. In between the giggling, the boy pointed to a book, “Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency,” by Nigel Kennedy. He then said, “Hey, look! Bill Clinton wrote a how-to book on being President.” The girlfriend, her Butthead to his Beavis, then made an oral sex reference.
I’m a LOT more concerned that our students think a book about someone is the same as a book by someone than whether they number the Web correctly.
Another possibility… Maybe the kid you met just doesn’t think that the Web is so interesting.
Thanks so much, Gary. I’ve used that quote a few times in the past, but had not been able to track down its source.
You may have misunderstood the point of my blog. I’m not at all concerned that the student Dennis Harter mentioned did not know the difference between a 1 and a 2. I think that what concerns me is that we continue to misunderstand the perspectives of our children, the perspectives that are formed by their information experiences.
It seems significant to me that these children have always know information environments that they could interact with, participate in, that they could play. It’s important not only in helping them to learn well and to learn the right things, but also in terms of tapping into that experience to cause effective learning.
I agree that students should be reading primary sources, but they should also be reading opinions, conversations, and biased positions. How else will they know the difference?
For perspective the studnet in fact is a regular user of web 2.0 tools. Just doesn’t see the need to call it that. It’s just the web as far as he’s concerned.
What David says is what struck me as well. Remembering that the student’s perspective matters and even when we try to connect, sometimes we don’t. But we keep trying.