Discourse about Discourse

“Why are you willing to pay $5.00 for a low quality 30-second clip of music but you aren’t willing to pay 99 cents for a good quality complete recording of the same song on iTunes?”

“Honestly… because my friends will hear it.”  – Sam Altman

I’m pretty sure that this can become an analogy for why creating blogging and collaborative writing communities are so much more engaging than writing in a journal, writing an essay for a teacher, or taking notes in class that are only for a test. Students aren’t willing to put forth the equivalent of 99 cents of effort if only they (or only their teacher) is going to see it. However, if their content will be seen by many other students, they will put forth $5.00 worth of effort.

I want my kids to always put forth $5.00 worth of effort. I want them to continue to come back and purchase more and more content from the ideas that my classes provide. Are there any other ideas other than giving students the ability to broadcast/syndicate their content that will make sure that we receive that level of engagement and effort? What is the specific value of expression that engages students? How can we capitalize on it in our classrooms?

“Our philosophy is that we want everyone to take our content and make it their own.” – Dixie Feldman (I couldn’t find the actual article, so this is cached.)

This woman really gets the kinds of environments that kids crave. She told the story of a character dying on Degrassi and students needing a place to grieve. She created that environment, gave kids the tools, and then let the kids talk. I find this anecdote to be extremely compelling. For the most part, I don’t do this in my classroom.

For the most part, we don’t show students compelling content and then let them recreate it. We don’t give them the tools and set up the environment and let them go. Why? Are we interested in what they would come up with, or are they more interested in seeing the kind of knowledge that they can amass?

I hope that we start to focus more on creating the environment and finding the best tools (ideas, resources, collaborative values, etc.) that will allow them to create or recreate learning. What are the standards for that?

There is a panel here at the Ypulse mashup of teenage entrepreneurs including Aseem Badshah, creator of Scriptovia.com. Scriptovia is an amazing website for sharing school papers and essays. During the panel I asked the following question: “What do you tell to teachers who are worried about kids using your site for plagiarism?”

His response was quite interesting. He first started talking about reassuring the teachers that they are working with turnitin.com and other anti-plagiarism sites, but then he started going on the offensive. He put a challenge out there for teachers: “We need to teach kids how to cite sources before fourth grade.” He said that most students are not trying to cheat; they just don’t know what qualifies as plagiarism. He also calls into the question the line between plagiarism and collaboration. We need to explain, expand, and explore this line.

Where is this line for you?

Should we respond to his challenge?

Clearly, this man is going to be a star. We need to watch his projects because he is going to move the debate, whether we are with him or not.

The Ypulse Mashup has turned into a much better event than I had previously thought. I think that it makes sense to continually question the theory of why kids are so drawn to online, mobile, and collaborative environments. Henry Jenkins is one speaker who has gotten me thinking.

His research into fan fiction has helped him to think about online communities that create mentorships and opportunities for continual advancement. He talks about how kids start writing harry potter fan fiction one day and then two years later they are helping other writers to edit their work and get it ready for publication. This is an amazing process for creating mentors. Why aren’t our educational communities like this?

We need to create online mentorships between adults and students. This needs to not be a weird element that borders on child predator activity. How can we set up these connections so that the mentorships go both ways. The digital native/immigrant debate is counterproductive. It doesn’t allow these groups to blend and change. It doesn’t allow students to indoctrinate teachers. It doesn’t create the kind of hope that is possible when communities cross-pollinate.

How can we do this? I really want to know.

I am now at the Ypulse Mashup 2007. It is all about Teens and Tweens and how they react to marketing, media, and education. The reason why I am here is put better on this post, but I think that there are a lot of ideas that can apply to education through marketing. The next few posts over the next couple of days will be used to discuss all of the ideas floating around at this mashup.

“It isn’t about pushing ideas down their throats, but rather letting them pull what they find useful.” -Music and Social Media

How can we let students pull content rather than pushing content upon them? How can we create an environment where there is so much content that students have to heavily explore and interact with the concepts in order to create meaning.

They must be able to access information at all times.

But, we shouldn’t be too eager to let them pull the answers out of the white noise of content. We should be helping them to craft the questions. There is no way that students will pull the right music, text, movies, concepts, skills, etc. unless they have crafted the right questions. We need to help them pull what will produce the most change, the most creation, the most higher order thinking skills.

We need students to pull, but we need them to pull well.