ECOO Day 2

On Day 2 the keynote speaker was Nora Young from the CBC.  She is an amazing speaker who linked the world of technology & media/social media to how we teach.

She spoke of the new world or "ecosystem" in which we live.  

An interesting observation she made is that she noted how there are many people who document what they eat on social media.  This is so true!  How many of you have seen a picture of someone's wonderfully prepared supper on their Twitter or Facebook feed.  She pointed out that we are living in a world that documents everything.   On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, BBM, text messages, blogs & wiki's around the world we are documenting what we do, how we do it, where we are going or where we currently are.

How does this impact our teaching?  Are we documenting what we are doing?  Are our classrooms transparent?  How are we teaching students to share, collaborate & interact with the world around them.

She went on to speak of how we are creating a "dynamic feedback loop" that is a relationship between the digital world we are creating and the real world around us.  We leave a "digital trail" behind us as we interact with the digital world.

An example Nora Young gave was Ushahidi, which is a website that was created in Kenya following the post-election violence.   It was used for people to text in where violence was happening in the country.  A map was created to mark these places and to document them, but also to see where violence was occurring.

Young pondered if our new digital world will have an impact on what we consider valuable information and how we will decide if information is credible.  How are we going to allow students to use & engage with this information?  We need to create a critically minded generation.

How can we support our students in this new world?

She described PRIVACY as being one of the "thorny" questions" that arise:

There are potentially creepy situations out there.... One example she gave was the Gigapixel technology  which allows you to piece pictures together, zoom in & then easily tag people.  "Anonymity Used to Mean Privacy. Not Anymore."  This technology was used to identify people in the Vancouver Stanley Cup Riots.

She also mentioned a story about a new "Stalker App" which was used to combine two streams of data "Four Square" and "Facebook" to allow an app to identify  women as they check into bars & then connect to their Facebook page.  Young then explained that the third party capabilities were later turned off on Four Square to prevent this possibility.

I can't wait to use those examples in my DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP education for our Intermediate students.

An interesting fact she presented as well is that 75% of homeless youth are on Facebook.  That really makes you think!

We have a remarkable opportunity 

Check out the video of her presentation at ECOO 2012.

 Stay tuned for my blog update about  resources, links, programs & lesson ideas!