A digital generation gap?

It's been an interesting week at the College for thinking about the application of new and emerging technologies in Further Education. We've Twittered with each other, attended a conference in Second Life, started this blog, created a new website and looked at a range of other technologies and services to deliver practical benefit to learners.


BBC Micro: 32k of nostalgia

It's been fun and it would take someone with a pretty thin imagination to not be inspired by the potential and immediately consider a dozen ways in which these tools would enhance the experience of our learners. Our emerging projects include, virtual buildings of our existing estate and those currently on the drawing board, an in-house version of Twitter that provides safe and managed access to real-time messaging based on curriculum groups and the integration of social-networking approaches to content management into our Intranet/Extranet.

I'm very conscious though that these plans are the product of discussions between a group of Further Education professionals of a certain age and background. Do we really understand the potential of the latest round of technologies? Are we immersed in the digital world in the same way as our target users? Is the world that we see the same as the one they are looking at?

An analogy would be learning a language as opposed to being a native speaker. We can play with Twitter and become familiar with the technology and even use it to communicate and work in an entirely valid way, but I suspect we will always be tourists (with a slight digital accent) and miss the subtleties of the medium in small but possibly important ways.

As evidence I look at my experience in using online forums over the past 10 years. I've grown up with the technology and as such am acquainted with pretty much every feature and function. But more importantly I also understand the culture of forums, the language of posts, the hierarchy of memberships and the amazingly varied way in which this fundementally simple communication tool is used. I also know that someone new to the medium will miss a lot of the subtext and subtleties that are employed.

What I am saying is, I speak fluent forumese, but only pidgin-twitter.

Some of the difficulties may be bound to notions of identity. My generation may refer to an "online" world and a "real" world, implying that the two are in some way divisible, with activities that take place in one having little bearing on those in the other. I think that for today's digital generation the boundary between the two worlds is far blurrier, if it even exists at all. This is not to imply that 16 year olds are disappearing into a matrix-style cyberworld, instead for them the online environment is just a tool to use like a piece of paper or a telephone. When they send a message they are not "Twittering" in a self-conscious way, they are just talking with friends.


Xbox360: tomorrow's fond memory

This possibly depressing view doesn't mean that the ideas we have come up with aren't valid. I think we've got some very exciting plans. What it does make me reflect on is the ability of a generation that didn't grow up with an incredible variety of media to develop the right learning environment for a generation that takes these things for granted.

As a child of the 70s who was programming a BBC micro at home at age 11, I consider myself a product of the digital age and am fairly resistant to the idea that I might be getting left behind. But perhaps I need to admit I am seeing a new generation growing up who will understand implicitly the potential of technology to enrich their lives and learning. We need to ask them for their ideas and try and make sure nothing gets lost in translation.

All of a Twitter

The last few days have seen the members of the ILS Team (and a few others at the College) experiment with Twitter as a communication tool. According to their website;

"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called "tweets" of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search."


Learning how to tweet

which is pretty straightforward and indeed Twitter is very easy to sign-up to and use. The tricky part is working out what it's actually for. What communication gap has it been developed to fill? It's voyeuristically entertaining to hear what Stephen Fry had for breakfast http://twitter.com/stephenfry or to find out what's going on at the Jodrell Bank http://twitter.com/jodrellbank observatory, but what advantage does Twitter provide over email, blogs or social networking sites like mySpace or Facebook?

At this stage I'm not entirely sure myself, but from early use in the workplace it does seem like Twitter (or similar services) have the potential to cut through the mass of email for particular types of information that would otherwise get lost.

With email the problem is often not seeing the wood for the trees and things get lost amid the mass of information with only those things that are urgent or from certain groups of people bubbling to the top. With Twitter it is possible to establish a less direct form of communication that is both less formal and more direct. The brevity of Twitter messages at 140 characters (about 30 words) does require a certain discipline and so what is communicated is cut-to-the-bone information. Of course it may be a largely useless message or it may be notification of an important event, but either way it's small and accessible enough that it can be read and discarded or acted upon as appropriate without having to wade through a lot of "uneccessary" baggage.

Part of the issue will be integrating Twitter into services that people already use, whether it's a favourite website, messenger services or RSS feeds. This is where its simplicity is a strength as it easily integrates into pretty much any text-based medium. I do wonder what will happen once the shine wears off and if the content will be strong enough to keep people visiting.

The proof is in the longevity of any web-based service and it may be that Twitter is just flavour of the month and is replaced by something more elegant that addresses the same needs. On possible downside is that the interface is a bit clunky and design seems something of an afterthought, although to be honest I think this adds to the charm. It may be though that Twitter is here to stay as one of a suite of tools alongside email, blogs, messenger services and forums that we use to communicate online.

Whatever the case we will be Twittering away as we build ICTHorizons.com and hope that you will join us.

Welcome to ICTHorizons.com

As I write this I’m not entirely sure what this site will become and to be honest with you that is part of the point. At South East Essex College we have a long track record of taking the best that ICT can offer and using it to support teaching and learning in a variety of innovative and practical ways. However the tricky thing about technology is that as soon as you get to where you want to be, there’s a new objective just over the horizon.

Naz and I inspect the virtual conference hall

In the last week twitter.com has been all over the news from Barack Obama to Stephen Fry, Mozilla have announced that a 3D internet is getting closer and a conference took place in Second Life titled "Are virtual worlds the classrooms of the future?" Maybe they are and maybe not, but what is inescapable is that the speed of change in the online world is getting faster and this brings with it new and exciting ways to enrich the learning experience of students.

Our intention is that ICTHorizons.com helps us keep our eyes firmly on the ever-changing future and the opportunities it provides. The site will be a place for us to learn, experiment, research, communicate, play and most importantly receive feedback and ideas from members of the College and wider online community.

Our aim is to be transparent about the use of technology at South East Essex College to support teaching and learning. Here you will be able to find out about current projects we are working on, technologies we are exploring and ideas we are discussing and debating.

We will provide information and resources about our work since 1997 developing one of the largest and most vibrant online environments in Further Education, seeNet our College Intranet.

We also plan to provide access to online versions of our real world buildings in virtual form for future students to find out more about us, and for current students as a place in cyberspace to meet and learn.

You will also be able to interact and explore our new capital building projects both in Southend and Thurrock and we hope this will be an exciting and innovative way for us to consult with you during the planning and construction phases of these projects.

More about all of these ideas as they develop.

Finally, who are we? ICTHorizons.com has been created and is maintained by the Interactive Learning Strategies Team at South East Essex College. As you tour the site you will find lots of active content from team members. Please ask them questions and contribute ideas, they will be delighted to receive them.

Paul Groome
Director of Planning and Resources