Email is for Old People
22
November
I’ve just joined another Wetpaint site that seems to offer some interesting considerations of required shifts in communication strategies for educational institutions. IN terms of communication, what can schools, teachers, administrators learn from students. While the focus seems to be upon K-12 contexts at this stage, based on recent exprrience I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that universitiues could also be considering some of the same questions.
EMail Is For Old People - EMail Is For Old People
EMail Is For Old People
Developing Our Own Digital Literacy (Session Overview)Email has been around for almost two decades and has served us well. Through email, we stay connected and share information and documents. It would be difficult to conceptualize our work without it. Yet, the internet has evolved over the past two decades from a place one visits to a place in which one interacts, offering new opportunities beyond email. Numerous web resources such as social bookmarking, social networks, RSS aggregation, blogs, and Twitter can be used to keep school board members, administrators and teachers up to date on emerging technology, teaching resources, and support networks. This session will provide an overview of Web 2.0 applications for personal learning and instructional use.
Key Questions
• How do Board members, administrators, and teachers communicate professionally and personally? More importantly, how do they share professional information?
• How is that different from how students communicate and share academically and personally?
• How could web applications be leveraged to facilitate professional and instructional collaboration, connections and communication?
1. Ken Allan | November 22nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Kia ora Kim!
I don’t think it is anything to do with HOW we communicate. It is more to do with how kids see email.
It is simply to do with the age-old feature of youngsters avoiding ANYTHING that is associated with adults. Tehy say “Adults use email? - we’re outa here!”
It is for this same reason that kids have hopped social networking application. They found Friendster. Quick to discover that adults were using it too, they switched to MySpace. It didn’t take long before the kids found that this was a domain of adults (20y and above!) so they switched to Facebook. That didn’t last too long with many kids, and they switched to Bebo.
Kids are like that. They find something. It’s theirs. They are not so entrenched in custom to think twice about pulling out and settling somewhere else, with their own friends - as long as there are no adults around!
Ka kite
from Middle-earth
2. Scott Merrick | August 1st, 2009 at 9:25 pm
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3. Maryjane | May 15th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
This made me laugh outloud. School districts are still discussing whether they’ll give access to students for email; do all their business by email instead of walking next door and talking to someone; and wonder why there are so many requests for open records from the public.
As an old person, I love FB because I can see what my grandchildren are doing; keep up with my friends of 30+ years; and socialize without the telephone in my ear.
Some people, not just old people, need to get with it in order to enjoy the new communication tools out there.
4. Suzanne | May 22nd, 2010 at 1:06 am
I cannot help but think that this trend, while reflecting archetypal youth rejection of all things “adult,” is also related to the digital immigrant/digital native thing. The young are very flexible, very willing to ride the crest of the new (whatever that may be) while older people tend to be more cautious and even resistant to change. This difference between them may be heightened by the relative comfort with technology and its changes.
5. Melanie | November 3rd, 2010 at 4:34 pm
I agree that email is outdated in most settings. However, many educational institutions will cling dearly to email due to the aspect of “waiting before sending.” Email is still a resource and an appropriate tool in those environments, however it may be considered too slow for our instant gratification society. What are your thoughts?
6. Kim Flintoff | November 3rd, 2010 at 10:53 pm
“instant gratification society” - I’m not sure I’m part of that society. Educational institutions do not make decisions - people do. Which people in educational institutions will cling dearly to email? Email is a resource - but my experience working with many young people is that they often treat email as just a minor extension to other short message formats that they use. I seldom receive a lengthy discussion or elaboration of thoughts in email from many users, especially from young people. I suspect they frame the means of communication in very different ways to baby boomers like me.
I don’t think its outdated for any of us… I think young people have different expectations of their communication media. Email is txt and txt is shrt. Nothing necessarily instant or gratifying but it does get a mechanical task out of the way quickly.
Email is cumbersome for someone used to 140 characters… part of the reason Twitter is popular. If I can keep my communication threads in a place where I can also keep tabs on friends, family and interesting people and things then it makes sense to do so… Facebook addresses all these elements. It allows a balance of public of private… email is too much behind closed doors…
email takes me away from the places I want to be…and demands I give attention to things that aren’t necessarily that much of a priority.
Having said that I attend to about 500+ emails per day - and in my personal inbox if I get tired I simply SELECT ALL and DELETE… if there was anything really important it will surface again.
Email is great… but its just one avenue and not always the best or most convenient. Just as I don’t use a mobile phone - I use an iPod Touch and an iPad - I know many people (not the least my wife, and some of my employers) find that a very odd position…if they want to contact me they message me via email, facebook, twitter, etc…
7. Melanie | November 4th, 2010 at 4:27 am
We may agree to disagree on the instant gratification society term, however when you look at new social network devices that are connected to mobile devices – there is an urgency that is attached to those applications. Email does not hold that same expectation. Emails are typically viewed as getting a response within 24 hours (48 hours on the weekend), whereas: tweets, texts, wall postings, etc. hold an expectation of being answered at a faster rate. A big portion in relation to your comments, I agree with you, is due to the limit of characters and the conversational information that occurs in those settings. However, these social network applications tend to be more informal, whereas an email may be considered a version of a “long-hand letter”- formal.
This may address the next point as to why the education institutions cling to email, take into consideration that emails are formalized documents that may be considered academically appropriate. As educators, we are encouraged to teach our students in online learning environments that our forums are formalized written environments (i.e. grammar check, spell check, content rich, etc.). The expectation in the workplace is to conduct ourselves in a professional manner, writing a proper email is a necessity. However, many workplaces today utilize IM devices to notify individuals and/or groups as a sense of urgency (i.e. meeting in the conference room – 5 minutes).
These messaging tools all hold value however I still believe that our society is beginning to focus on instant gratification due to our techie tools and rates of replies. It is only natural to expect answers right away when we receive them right away. Therefore, our behaviors may put the notion of emails out of business due to our own expectations. Please share your thoughts.