Thanks to Will Richardson‘s recommendation, I recently read David Silver’s essay History, Hype and Hope: An Afterword. And like Richardson, I found the following paragraph quotable:
This is the writeable generation, a generation of young people who think of media as something they read and something they write – often simultaneously. This is a generation of content creators, a generation of young people who with the help of Web 2.0 tools know how to create content, how to share content, and how to converse about content. This is the generation for whom broadcast media – and its silent, obedient audiences – is rapidly fading and for whom conversations make more sense than lectures. This is a new generation with new writeable behaviors and it’s hard not to be hopeful about that.
Silver is interacting with university-level students, whom I can well believe are content creators.
I am wondering how I can help my high school students become the type of university / college students that Mr. Silver is encountering. Right now I would have to say that few of my students are really using Web 2.0 apart from Facebook. And while Facebook does allow for some content sharing and conversation, and arguably content creation, it is the light version of it in my opinion.
So tonight I’m wondering how I can assist teenagers – many of whom don’t have regular internet access – find and work with content creation tools that suit them. I have to accept that some will want to use tools that I’m not personally working with, so what will be my criteria for allowing their use in the classroom? And how can I best support students in using tools that I am just learning myself?
