An analysis of every tweet on Twitter in July, 2009 finds that the network “distance” between any two users averages six 4.12 degrees of separation. (In other words, roughly a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend.)
PewInternet reports that half of teens send at least 50 text messages a day (older teen girls average more than 100.)
For teens, SMS is now the #1 medium of communication with peers, far ahead of face-to-face, email, and telephone for spoken conversation.
The exception? Using the phone to talk (not text) with the parental units.
Read the full report here.
I stumbled across this article today. It’s from 2006, but I think that, in some ways, it bears more consideration now because the variety and power of social Web tools has increased considerably since its publication.
Arguably, they have advanced to a point where mixing, matching, and mashing up a variety of tools (the “small pieces, loosely joined” approach) may actually be “easier” for students and teachers than using an “integrated” solution like Blackboard that bundles curriculum resources, collaboration tools, intraclass communications, and blogs into a single package wholly owned and managed by the teacher or school.
In part, this is a result of the “jack of all trades, master of none” phenomenon. Putting philosophical arguments against relying on integrated learning management systems aside for a moment, it is hard to imagine how a company like Blackboard could invest enough resources to build a better blogging platform than (say) Wordpress AND a better collaborative research tool than Diigo AND a better real-time communication platform than Jabber and Skype AND a better wiki tool than… well, you get the idea.
Second, if makes pedagogical sense to use tools that are already familiar to students (and teachers) unless the unfamiliar tools have such clear advantages that investing student and teacher time in mastering the learning tool (vs. the actual content and skills of the course) is justified.
In the years since the article was published, hundreds of millions of students and teachers have gained familiarity with online networking and collaboration tools through personal use for social, entertainment, and informal learning purposes.
Why not leverage this familiarity in formal learning settings so students can focus attention and energy on the course content itself rather than the delivery system (especially when that system has no applications outside the formal learning setting)?
Interestingly, the developer communities behind some of the open source learning management systems (e.g. Moodle) seem to be conceding this point in recent years, creating plug-ins that bring tools and content from the outside Web into the LMS rather than trying to reinvent them inside the closed environment of the LMS, in effect moving toward Dalsgard’s argument of using learning management systems solely for “class administration” tasks (e.g. managing enrollment and gradebooks) while taking advantage of outside tools for delivering instructional media, facilitating discussions, providing feedback, etc.
