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
Hey there, feel free to unpublish this comment–it’s more or less for your own info:
This is to let you know that Digital Chalkie has been nominated for Blog-o-the-Month at the Blogger’s Hut on Second Life at ISTE Island. Feel free to grab a “nominated” image at http://scottsecondlife.blogspot.com to share on your site to encourage readers to visit Second Life at http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/18/130/23/ and click the appropriate square on the polling object to vote for your blog! September’s winner will occupy the inhouse RSS feed and a prominent graphic screengrab display in the hut for all to see. The Blog Hut typically sees 600+ avatars per month, and ISTE members inworld number upwards of 5,000 avatars.
Cheers!
Scott Merrick
Scottmerrick Oh in Second Life
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.