August 5, 2009
That Ain’t No Chance to Ruin Deep Reflection-Or is it-the Micro-blog
Posted in W2W tagged blogs, higher education, microblog, social networking, Web 2.0 at 4:00 PM by Lesley Ann
Trent Batson, Ph.D.,executive director of The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL, www.aaeebl.org),writes lately about the importance of understanding the role of natural language coding in the W2W world. Dr. Batson makes valid points about the insights we all are missing as we try to guess the needs of the new students in higher education. He points out that this generation is continually receiving information bombardment with blogs and now, with micro-blogging and he writes that this new W2W language code can change even within one single day. To him the task is simple, we have to teach them how to write in these virtual environments. Though I can concur with most of these premises, it strikes me as very unsatisfying that the new micro-blogging fad is becoming acceptable as a real means to communicating with students. I am not suggesting there is no validity to including it for instruction itself, yet I am apprehensive at how quick we have developed ways to use it, and will that enhance any negative potential. For instance, if we all end up reflecting in a few sentences, what will happen to the deeper critical thoughts, that in the past, we loved so much to inspire in our students’ research papers and academic essays? Hence in turn, how long does it take before our students start to avoid quality forms of written messages, like the ones we find in lengthy well thought out articles and books. Professional published ponders from expert teachers, whose sole responsibility is to pass on forms of knowledge or inspire critical thinking about the content that exists in a given subject, will be lost to the lack of tolerance students will most certainly build up as they become addicted to Micro-blogging for communication . I doubt that anyone with our professional teaching gifts can inspire new knowledge in our subject areas and just capture it all within 160 characters, not the deep thinking kind, anyway. With that, I do not want to see more of our students simply avoiding the serious tasks of harvesting the facts, delineating out the truths, and building on the principles involved in genuine extended study of material. What are the implications? I really have too much anxiety to guess.
