Back in the mid-seventies, my sister introduced our family to the CB radio(citizens band) craze. Rushing into the house one afternoon, she frothed about how cool it was to talk to truckers on the nearby NJ Turnpike. Cruising around with her high school friends, an older boy taught her the tips and tricks of talking on the radio. But he took advantage of her ignorance and had a blast by helping her come up with a “handle” (name). It must have been amazing to see the wave of responses the spritely young “Eager Beaver” got when she called out “Breaker One-Nine.”
Although their shared qualities of social networking and citizen media draw parallels between CB radio and Web 2.0, it’s their distinct vocabulary which piques my interest. It may have been easy to “put the hammer down” while looking “over your donkey” for “smokies” on the “green stamps”, it may not be easy to “fill your aggregator” with “feeds” while “Trackbacking” by “pinging”. Any teacher interested in explaining their excitement and success with educational technology has a huge hurdle to jump, the goofy language of Web 2.0.
How does one say “Moodle” with a straight face? Does it help to say it stands for “modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment”. And what do you do with “Diigo”, “Spurl” and “ELGG”? And although “blog”, “wiki” and “podcasting” now enjoy a certain familiarity among most people, how many can the difference between them?
At least everyone know what “Google” is, but that took ten years, a market capitalization in excess of $200 billion and an entry in the dictionary.
The slang of the CB was part of its allure, no newspaper article fueling the hype was without an inset box prominent examples. Even Betty Ford (the “first mama”) could get a CB dictionary and sound like a gearjammer. But this was only a fad that sat in between the pet rock and roller disco, it was not serious education.
Can we fault people for laughing at our “tweets”?
It’s funny how the students can’t remember the difference between concepts taught in their classes but yet they could give you a half-hour explanation on the minute differences between blogs and forums.
I’m involved in an online tutoring business where a whiteboard is primarily used during the sessions. It’s amazing how much time it takes to introduce the parents to all of the different icons, tools and features of the online classroom. Many parents even seem overwhelmed by the new technology. However, their kids hop on and have no problem navigating the tools – even w/out any explanation. The kids can’t understand why the parents don’t “get” it!
I was trying to explain to my 7 year old daughter yesterday that there were no computers around in my house when I was her age. She had the hardest time comprehending that – especially considering she is in a house w/ 3 laptops, 2 desktops, and a multitude of other technology that she uses.
I was trying to come up with some “universal skills” to include in professional development programs and “screen awareness” was top on the list. I think even the natives need some help in this area. They just don’t have a sense that every program and web site application is designed to be used. Every situation you encounter has a way out, you just have to read the screen and look for the links.
The main difference between the kids and the adults is several hundred hours of GameBoy screen awareness. They have less excuse for not being able to find their way around.