There has been lots of discussion about realising student participation in the edublogosphere in the past year. Driven be a belief that students “should be participating in our edublogger conversations on an equal footing, as equal partners”, Clay Burrell and others have helped students set up Student 2.0, a blog that is “administered, designed, edited, and written by a global mix of students of varying ages, interests, voices, and points of view. Students 2.0 will feature content written by both staff writers and guest contributors. From Hawaii and Washington, from St. Louis and Chicago, from Vermont, New York, Scotland, Korea, and other points on the globe, these writings will be united in one central aspect: quality student writing, full-voiced and engaging, about education.

Students 2.0 is about quality over quantity – one or two posts will be published every day. Every author will write a post approximately two times a month. Every post is reviewed for quality and grammar by a student editor. In addition, guest posters will occasionally invited to contribute. No matter what, all posts will relate directly to one or more of our topics: leading, learning, and teaching. All authors and editors are students.

Authors will also have the option of writing asides: small posts with links to elsewhere in the edublogosphere. These will serve as a method for sharing breaking news while still maintaining a high quality standard.

RSS feeds will be offered for a variety of uses. There will be feeds available for posts & asides, as well as both together. We will also have a comments feed available if a lively discussion suits your taste. A conglomerate feed, containing the posts from all of our individual blogs, will also be published, for the truly insane. Of course, there will also be a master feed containing all of our fine feeds rolled into one. Eat up!

This post from Julie Lindsay is just what I wanted to start this conversation about digital natives.

She accepts change and new tools without hesitation. She uses a variety of hardware and software including online places with confidence. She can be doing homework, IMing and listening to music (iPod) at the same time. (yes, I know some studies show this is not true, that in fact multitasking does not exist however the ability to sequence events at a fast rate is essentially what is happening here). She is interested in the online world and participates in online interactions and wants to join SecondLife (!!!). She wants a new laptop (a tablet PC, no less), she wants a digital camera, she wants a playstation (mean mother will not buy a playstation…maybe a PSP is the way to go?)

How different life is for my daughter to when I was 13! How different will life be for her daughter? We can only surmise, but I do know that as a digital native and as a third culture kid and a global citizen she is developing and fostering the ability to use technology sensibly for communication and interaction with others as well as for learning about the world as it continues to evolve.

What do you think the future holds for you, for your children? Let’s see if we can get a comment from everyone in the class!

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Computers are coming to your tables, walls, filing cabinets, doors, and oh my goodness, perhaps even that flat surface on the student desk.

“[Surface is] the first in the company’s new category of surface-computing products that it has touted as “breaking down traditional barriers between people and technology.”

Surface has a30-inch display in a table-like format that can recognize physical objects. It allows, according to Microsoft, “hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. … through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.”Surface can also recognize objects embedded with identification tags similar to bar codes….Surface, asMicrosoft sums it up, brings an “opportunity to create technology thatwould bridge the physical and virtual worlds.”

Devices will roll out the end of this year!

The applications here for education are incredible! How about a word wall that changes depending on the class that is in your room. Think about the manipulatives potentials — use them but NO clean up — just a little Windex and wipe off the fingerprints!

This is only the beginning. The revolution is here.

Then I found this video about it,

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271552687/bctid933742930

What does this mean for future education? Please leave your comments.

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In the 1970s, I watched the Dick Tracy cartoon
where the detective, Dick, would speak into his watch and communicate
with headquarters. In the 1960s, Maxwell Smart from Get Smart was a popular show where the bumbling hero spoke into his shoe phone and had all sorts of gadgets.

Recently, Nike and Apple got together to release the “Nike +” running shoes and iPod Sport Kit, designed for use by joggers.

The Sport Kit allows your Nike+ shoe to talk to your iPod nano. The
sensor uses a sensitive accelerometer to measure your activity, then
wirelessly transfers this data to the receiver on your iPod nano. See source

With these shoes and iPod, joggers can now listen to music that syncs with their running tempo. A slow jog delivers a slower beat, a sprint changes the music to a more upbeat song. I really hate jogging, so I can’t see myself ever getting these items.

I remembered seeing an article about Levi releasing a new pair of jeans for the iPod with an “invisible” pocket to hide the iPod while it had a special controller in the watch pocket.

I also found that jackets are now available where the iPod fits to the inside of the jacket and the sleeve becomes the controls.What gadgets will students have in the future? We are getting closer to a convergence of technologies where mobile phones and cameras and GPS and voice recorders and music players and computers will be incorporated into one device. How long before these devices will replace laptop or desktop computers and become part of a student’s tools?

So if jean, shoe and jacket companies can make special items for the iPod, what will the school uniform of the future look like?

Will school uniform committees be brave enough to allow students to wear clothing that allows these new devices to be worn in such a way that they can be used in class? Will they consider student safety as they get to and from school by ensuring these devices are hidden from view?

I have a son who has trouble with handwriting and spelling. My hope is that by the time he gets to secondary school, he will be able to use a voice recorder to record his thoughts, stories, answers, essays, etc. and have his computer convert it to text for him. Imagine a uniform that had a microphone in the lapel of a jacket that was so designed to record only the wearer’s voice. This could then be turned into podcasts or text as described above.

Will classrooms of the 21st Century still be contained within 4 walls? I hope not. Imagine students taking their tools safely from learning site to learning site and using the tools at their disposal. A
camera, computer, mobile phone and GPS for safety. It is conceivable that these will be in one device in the future and small enough to fit within a sleeve or pocket or even on the student’s wrist.

What do you think? I’d love to hear some detailed replies. Maybe we could add another page to this blog and you could scan in your drawings etc. Let me know if you want to do this.

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