David Jakes of The Strength of Weak Ties, posted a great article in the TechLearning Blog this week, The Kids are Alright. He refers to a new blog called Students 2.0 (http://students2oh.org/). Here is the “About Us” caption in the right panel of the blog page.
We are students: the ones who come to school every day, raise our hands with safe questions, and keep our heads down. Except, now we have a voice—a strong voice—to share our ideas through a global network.
It appears to be a rather small collection of high school students from Missouri, Vermont, Washington, Illinois, Hawaii, Korea, Scotland, and New York. It is not clear from the blog itself what this history is, though there is some hint in the comments on David’s T&L blog post and in Kevin Walter’s latest entry. That and a little research led me to this blog post by Clay Burell, Students 2.0 Edublog Pre-Launch: Help Spread the Splash. In it, he features a YouTube video that Jakes also embeds in his blog. I’m not going to re-embed it here. Just go the Clay or David’s blogs to watch, or go directly to YouTube for Students 2.0 Launch Teaser.
I find all of this especially interesting in light of the long conversation that ensued from my confessions about a student panel activity last week.
Added Later:
Ryan Bretag also wrote about this project in TechLearning, in Student Voices Wanted.
I am getting excited about this. Seeing highschool students using blogs to get their thoughts out there is very powerful. I like the current trend. We need to listen to student conversations. The video was excellent. I’m looking forward to becoming part of this conversation.
A day late and a dollar short – or at least a day late. Admittedly, it’s very difficult to keep up!
No offense, David, but all of this emerged WHILE you were confessing “about a student panel activity last week”. In fact, I thought your post about student panels was actually a reaction to Students 2.0.
Unless one follows the Twitter conversation, at times their true intentions can be misunderstood.
This has been in discussion since June or so.
It’s nice that all the Names are talking about it.
They’re really not “kids,” though.
(Oh, and Ryan Bretag featured s2oh on Tech Learning before Jakes did, by the way.)
So that’s what all that swooshing was around my head. You’re right. Admittedly, I keep the Twitterverse switched off most of the time. Too much information.
Clay, congratulations to you and to everyone else who contributed to getting these kids together. If I’m bringing this source of ideas to anyone new, then I am very happy.
Oops! I said it again. “kids!” Of course many of the teachers I see, I consider to be kids too! 😉 I need to adjust!
Thanks again!
Clay: Agreed, but I think it depends upon your frame of reference (my grandmother, for example, still calls me a kid – and I’m 36 years old with several of my own).
As for the Names? You’re One now, too, you know.
36? I could easily have children 36 years old. They are kids to me. But they are the future. The future we are preparing them for is the future that they are going to choose, the future that they are going to invent. The idea that we know everything that needs to be packed into every day of their 13 years of schooling to be prepared for their future is the height of arrogance, in my opinion.
The best advice that we could give to any teacher is to pay attention to your students.
They’re also the seeds of our future!
No no no, Darren. I’m an English and history teacher just writing about what I do in the classroom, and beyond it.
And that your granny calls you a kid is no good argument that we need to perpetuate the condescension into the next generation. Age does not equal superior intelligence. There are lots of stupid, immature adults who love the luxury of looking down on the young because society allows it.
This doesn’t help the young, I’d wager.
And I’ll be Kevin, for example, knows more about technology than David Jakes, Darren Draper, and Clay Burell combined.
He’s no kid. In fact, in a few months he’ll be legally an adult. Will he still be a kid then anyway?
Thanks for the support. (Albeit late to the party)
I have to object to being called a “kid” who has to be brought together. In reality, most of this has been completely directed by us-the students. If it was done any other way, I think you would find something similar to your student panels happening. By doing all of the management & administration ourselves, we are free from saying what the adults want us to say.
As you can see from Kevin’s latest post, we are perfectly willing to question our teachers – even Clay, who has been the most supportive of us throughout.
If we are to choose our own future, should we not also be choosing how we prepare for it?
Objection noted! I think that it is a matter of perspective, and I mean no condescension. However, intentions are often not enough to get your point across — which I can attest to.
It seems that we live in a time where, although, having lived for 50+ or 60+ or… years continues to have enormous value in experiences and having developed “tried and true” tools for coping, we live in an era of rapid change and on the cusp of one where we will be able to accomplish almost anything, because of the growing intelligence of the planet. Here, it’s the agile and creative mind that will move forward. It’s why I tell educators to respect what our youngers are accomplishing and to pay a lot of attention to them/you.
Our shared concern is, are we doing all that we can to help all of you to be agile and creative? Often, we are not, and we should care. It’s our future too.
I’ve been in education 23 years and have never heard the term “kids” being used by any educator in a condescending way. Generally, I think its a term that educators use fondly.
Sorry to hear that so many are offended by that term…
I agree, Jakes. To me, “kids” is not a degrading term. For years, I referred to my high-school students as “my kids” – more of a term of endearment (signally that I really cared about them) than anything I ever tried to use in distancing them from me.
Perhaps the term has slightly different connotations in other places?
As the teacher of one of the ‘students’ (The Bass Player) I also took the opportunity to blog about the launch. (http://nwinton.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/doing-it-for-themselves/)
Good to see you picking up on the blog, and like many others I think it’s going to be interesting to see how the concept develops. I know that The Bass Player has lots of good ideas about where he sees student/pupil blogging et al going, so I hope to see some really interesting things coming out of the blog.