Teaching for the Future

During a session at PodCamp NYC 2 led by Christine Cavalier, I had a revelation about the way we look at YouTube. Christine's session was all about "how to raise kids in this digital world" and there were a lot of interesting ideas brought up. Christine talked a lot about becoming digitally literate so that we can speak to the digital natives in our lives. She also drew a lot from ELL education, and made the case that we should teach technology in the same way we teach children to speak and interact in an English(American) culture.

As I figured it would the conversation led to the recent controversy surrounding a staged video of a group of girls beating up a younger classmate. One of the attendees, Aldon Hynes, talked about the dangers of social networking as a tool for bullying and abuse. I don't want to misquote anyone, so I'm going to do my best to paraphrase what I heard and hopefully if I'm off base someone can come on the show and correct me or just fix and inaccuracies in the comments. Aldon talked about how a lack of proper modeling/teaching/supervision led to the assalt/video and how it had the potential to ruin the lives of everyone involved because these kids didn't understand to scope of their actions and the permanence of the Internet.

It was at the moment that I realized that most of the people in the room not only spoke a different "technological language" than many young people, but that we are not even part of the same paradigm. Aldon's comments made me realize that kids are operating under different social codes, norms, and perspectives about how to use social media/networking/the Interwebs. Which brings me back to Christine Cavalier's point about teaching digital skills and responsibility like it is a language. Just as everyone thinks and sees the world through the lens of their native language, the "digital natives" in our lives see the world through their own lens.

To better explain this idea I wanted to talk to someone who understands young people, particularly teens, and the role of social media in the lives of kids. Vanessa Van Petten is a blogger, author, podcaster, and life coach who teaches parents to better understand their teens.

In this episode we begin our discussion about the role of YouTube in our culture effects the k-12 classroom. YouTube allows us to have a great deal of engaging content easily accessible. Though not all of the videos are "classroom ready", YouTube is becoming a valuable resource to teachers, students, and learners of all ages.

YouTube in not just for consuming content, and a vibrant community of content creators and enthusiasts has formed on the site. In this episode we address some of the issues and concerns many teachers have about the site, and why YouTube is a factor in education even though it is not often part of the classroom.

 Next Episode I speak with author, blogger, and teen life coach Vanessa Van Petten. Vanessa and I speak about why teens find video sharing so interesting to teens and how it has changed the way they interact online. You can find out more about Vanessa at her site: http://www.vanessavanpetten.com

This is just a quick podcast that I did to let you know that I'm working hard in the studio on a few new podcasts. The first is a discussion dealing with literacy with a focus on reluctant readers. I am also working on an episode that addresses the present and the future of YouTube in the K-12 classroom.

I'm going to start a segment that features a different member of the audience each week called "Better Know a Listener". I hope to use this to introduce listeners to what each other are doing.

I also want to thank Mark Gura and Kathy King for all their kind words and for mentioning Teaching for the Future on an episode of the Podcast for Teachers. I must have missed this episode. Everything they said was a lie, wonderful and glowing lies about Teaching for the Future. You can find that episode of their podcast here.