One of the issues facing teens is the realization of what it means to be digitally connected to the world. For many of them, this realization has come at a cost. The Eden Prairie High School students who got into trouble after school officials saw pictures of them with alleged alcoholic beverages ran afoul of this new reality: Digital cameras and social networking sites make the entire world a public space. Forty-two students were interviewed, and 13 face some form of discipline over the pictures, school officials said Wednesday, a day after media reports that party photos on Facebook had sparked a crackdown....PDF download of full article.
Global changes in the last 50 years have resulted in a continuously accelerating knowledge revolution. In less than a single lifetime, jet aircraft, televisions, transistor radios, hand held calculators, cellular phones, powerful personal computers, the Internet, and iPods have appeared and radically changed our lives. Rapid, inexpensive global communication and travel are a reality. On the down side, information overdose is now a common problem. People in developed nations have 24 hour access to news and entertainment in many forms and vast databases of information are as close as the nearest computer with Internet access.
What are some of the factors...what will continue to contribute to this change....For some answers to these questions..read on.
In addition to social changes, Internet access has affected other things from sales to poilitics. In the 2000 election in South Korea, the Internet emerged as a powerful political tool that will affect how future elections are run in South Korea and perhaps elsewhere in Asia, according to politicians and analysts. Click to read more...
Over the last several years, the Internet has provided a haven for the seamier side of culture. Children and young adults have been schooled in online behavior, but the allure of open access often with little supervision has a strong pull...stronger, sometimes, than peer pressure or the threat of punishment.
MySpace. YouTube. Facebook. Nearly every teen in America is on the Internet every day, socializing with friends and strangers alike, "trying on" identities, and building a virtual profile of themselves--one that many kids insist is a more honest depiction of who they really are than the person they portray at home or in school. On January 25, 2008, Frontline will air a thought-provoking piece about growing up online. For more info....
The Internet is a powerful tool for information and innovation. In the last few years it has also become a vehicle for humanitarian efforts that involve children and young adults. These efforts have the potential to encourage the activist in us all to reach out and make a difference. Below are examples of sites that create networks and partnerships between countries in order to help solve some of the world's toughest problems...poverty and hunger.
Freerice.com
Practice your vocabulary and help to fight hunger. For each word you get right, they donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. I earned 2020 grains in the few minutes it took to write this entry. FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.
FreeRice has two goals:
1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on the site. Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.
Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. More info....
Pennies for Peace
Pennies for Peace educates American children about the world beyond their experience and shows them that they can make a positive impact on a global scale, one penny at a time.
The best hope for a peaceful and prosperous world lies in the education of all the world’s children. Through cross-cultural understanding and a solution-oriented approach, Pennies for Peace encourages American children, ultimately our future leaders, to be active participants in the creation of global peace.
If you want to help, look for the Pennies for Peace penny collection jars around MPA. Click here for more info.
Three Cups of Tea
Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute, Pennies For Peace, and co-author of New York Times bestseller ‘Three Cups of Tea’ which has been a bestseller for over nine months since its release and was Time Magazine Asia Book of The Year.
By replacing guns with pencils, rhetoric with reading, Mortenson combines his unique background with his intimate knowledge of the third-world to fight terrorism with books, not bombs, and successfully bring education and hope to remote villages in central Asia. This book is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time. Read on...
Global Youth Connect
GYC's mission is to build and support a community of youth who are actively promoting and protecting human rights, and to educate and inspire the next generation to work for peaceful change. More info...
Examining the problems of poverty is integral to the mission of Mounds Park Academy. Students of every age can participate and become part of the solution. Awareness builds bridges between people.
They come here, to the Jump Up Internet Rescue School, to be cured.South Korea boasts of being the most wired nation on earth. Ninety percent of homes connect to cheap, high-speed broadband, online gaming is a professional sport, and social life for the young revolves around the “PC bang,” dim Internet parlors that sit on practically every street corner.
Compulsive Internet use has been identified as a mental health issue in other countries, including the United States. However, it may be a particularly acute problem in South Korea because of the country’s nearly universal Internet access. Read on...
How do you know if you're already addicted or rapidly tumbling toward
trouble? The Internet Addiction Test is the first validated and
reliable measure of addictive use of the Internet. Take the test.
Wikipedia information....read it here.
Okay, now that I've started, I can't finish. I guess that I am not a "digital native." I don't speak "chat" very well. My thumbs get too sore to text and I want to use correct grammar. So sue me. Even my jargon is old ;-\
In the most recent Edtech magazine, Ian Jukes describes the emergence of a new type of child. One whose brain processes information in a fundamentally different way from adults according to the most recent findings in Neurobiology.
More than 19 billion instant messages are sent every day. As a result, we are seeing a hybrid write-speak language based on words and pictures evolve to meet the complex ideas people want to convey. Research also indicates that this generation continues to change physically and chemically. During the last 5 years, research into neuroplasticity has shown that the brain will reorganize and literally restructure its neural pathways based on the input and intensity of activity. This restructuring allows people to process and interact with information differently than for previous generations.
It is no longer simply analog vs digital. It is not just the friction between the generations. At the molecular level, the preferred method of communication has fundamentally changed how our children think. OMG, indeed.
According to the latest Harris Interactive poll, US adults generally do not think that schools are teaching 21st century skills. My question is, does the general adult population know what these skills are? The chart above lists the categories of skills students will need for success...organization, communication, problem solving & reasoning, creativity, teamwork & collaboration, science & technology. (Of course, as a math teacher, I wonder...where is math in this list?)
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is clear on the most important lessons for the next generation. Global awareness, civic literacy and the creative problem-solving skills are necessary to communicate and collaborate effectively. Flexibility and initiative creates thinkers who might be able to answer the question, "How will the climate change affect our world?", challenging them to become global leaders. Read on...
The November 2007 issue of Learning and Leading with Technology provided a set of observations that might help teachers better integrate technology into their classes. The biggest road block is time...time to grow more comfortable with the technology, time to develop lessons, time to collaborate and share. Click here for full article.
Teaching 21st century skills requires a different approach to education, involving students in more interactive, self-paced lessons. Some of these ideas include:
•Rather than topical research, teachers pose research questions that require students to gather information in order to make a decision, choose between alternatives or answer a question.
•Teachers move from "video lectures" to interactive, hyper-linked presentations that allow students to explore a topic.
•Teachers use short videos to highlight a point or make a comparision.
•Teachers augment classroom texts with online materials.
•Students create meaning from a variety of resources in order to demonstrate what they know.
•Students use word processors and associated tools like spell-check and grammar-check to become better writers.
•Students choose between a variety of options to create presentations that demonstrates their learning. These projects involve audio, video and images.
•Teachers facilitate blogs and chats, email discussions and websites to encourage thinking and respectful discourse.
Accidentally, MPA teachers might have touched on a 21st century formula for education. All of these skills and opportunities are embedded in the curriculum at all levels. Amazing.
