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Rethinking How We Communicate With Students Via an LMS by Audrey Watters on 02. Aug, 2011 in News Rethinking (Student) Communication When Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Facebook’s new messaging system last year, he started the press event with an anecdote about his girlfriend’s little sister and her friends — how high school students use (or rather, don’t use) email. That’s not a surprising revelation to those of us who work or live with teenagers. A recent Pew Internet study found that only 11% of teens say they use email to communicate with friends, and even that figure seems a little high. For many students — both in high school and in college — email is not their preferred mode of personal communication; rather, it’s the mode they’re forced to use for professional purposes (i.e., for school). In its attempt to become the central hub of communications — personal and professional — Facebook’s new messaging system was seen as an attempt to “kill” email. (“Take that, Google!” is the subtext here, of course.) There are plenty of reasons why doing so makes sense (I mean, ugh, email), and even though it hasn’t killed email — not remotely — there’s a lot to like about Facebook’s new messaging system: it’s real-time. It ditches the formality of email. It can be synchronous or asynchronous, depending if the person you’re talking to is online. You can respond via email or SMS, so you aren’t force to visit the site in order to respond. Rethinking Communication via the LMS All of the things that make Facebook’s messaging system appealing for students and for schools — something I wrote about back in November last year — are largely absent when it comes to the traditional learning management sy

stem’s communication offerings

Social Learning – Learning by observing, conversing, or questioning. This can take place in an informal or formal setting and sometimes may even occur without the learner realizing that learning is taking place or without making a conscious decision to learn. It’s organic and usually unorganized. Social Learning is more focused on the needs of the individual. In social learning, a participant might ask “What do *I* need to know and who knows how to answer this quickly?” Knowledge is primarily consumed or pulled from experts.

Communities of Practice (CoPs) – Groups of people with a common interest that are focused on collaboration and sharing of information related to that common interest. CoPs have a purpose, organization, and are usually tied to a business goal when used in corporations. A CoP is more focused on improving performance and enhancing knowledge of the group, as opposed to an individual. In CoPs, a participant might ask “What can I share with the group or how can we solve a problem together?” Knowledge is primarily shared or pushed.

What starts out as social networking is evolving into social production.

Social media has the potential to revolutionize our model of learning by transforming individual students from information silos into smart nodes within a dynamic and interdependent learning network. By serving as the connective tissue of a learning environment — whether it’s a class, school or community organized around common interests — social media can enhance student communication, collaboration and problem solving by aggregating perspectives. Through the process of sharing our perspectives we can get closer to seeing the whole picture. With a more comprehensive picture we improve our ability to innovate and problem solve.

According to Cathy Davidson's Now You See It, 65 percent of students entering school today will have careers in fields that haven't been invented yet. 

how do we prepare our students to write effectively in environments that don't yet exist?

as recently as four years ago, who would have imagined that major companies would have employees whose jobs were to interact with customers on Twitter, or that someone could make a career out of writing for Facebook? Four years before that, not only did those jobs not exist, Twitter and Facebook didn't exist

est-ce que la forme actuelle de la scolarisation est adaptée au contexte culturel,social,économique et technologique qui environne la société ? Pourquoi ne pas la poser ? Parce que l’on touche à des convictions qui sont tellement ancrées dans le patrimoine commun de l’humanité (mais parfois imposé à certains) qu’il est quasiment impossible d’en discuter,de poser la question,et surtout d’envisager d’y répondre.

l’évolution récente de l’attitude des élèves par rapport aux apprentissages scolaires devrait pourtant alerter sérieusement chacun des niveaux de l’enseignement scolaire,de la classe aux bureaux des ministères.

Une frilosité globale semble être la norme dès lors que l’on aborde l’organisation de la scolarisation.

The skills that make us better explainers, better persuaders, better story tellers, and better thinkers are all fundamentally influenced by writing.