Young people communicate and collaborate every few minutes –
it’s an obsession. They text, MSN, BBM, Myspace, Facebook, Facebook message, Facebook
chat and Skype. Note the absence of email and Twitter. Then there’s Spotify,
Soundcloud, Flickr, YouTube and Bitorrent to share, tag, upload and download
experiences, comments, photographs, video and media. They also collaborate closely
in parties when playing games. Never have the young shared so much, so often in
so many different ways. Then along comes someone who wants to teach them this
so called 21st C skill, usually in a classroom, where all of this is
banned.
"I'm always amused at this conceit, that we adults, especially in education, think we even have the skills we claim we want to teach. There is no area of human endeavour that is less collaborative than education."