With pervasive access to Facebook, Twitter, IM and a whole host of other online communication technologies, today’s students are our first generation of digital natives.  Children born in 1990 entered a world that already had experienced email for 22 years, personal computers for 16 years, cell phones for 12 years and even popular video games — the iconic “Pong” — for 18 years.  Raised with technology, these students have been primed and ready for technology in the classroom.  But with technology coming more slowly to education than other disciplines, NCTI panelists and conference participants wrestled with an important question, “Can Teachers Themselves Become Digital Natives?”

Getting the discussion started, NCTI panelists Andy Carvin, Steve Hargadon, Michael Levine and Lee Rainie offered some perspectives on the relevant characteristics of social media to today’s students, its potential role in learning, existing barriers to implementation and some examples of successful implementations.  With conversation around these key issues conference participants including educators, technology developers and researchers explored a number of interesting insights:

To the question of the value of social media, panelists noted that the characteristics of social media tools may help students develop their abilities to be more self-directed, capture and assimilate lots of information, make them more reliant on feedback from teachers and peers, and bring more cross-disciplined insights to their work while giving their their own sources for content production and self-expression.

Where much emphasis in the past has been placed on barriers that prevent teachers from figuring out how to apply emerging tools, today’s discussion participants explored not only the need for teachers to gain understanding of the tools, but also of education organizations to provide the kinds of training, infrastructure and assistance needed to make them useful.

With so much enthusiasm, fear and excitement around social media, sometimes its role and limitations are lost.  As a conversational medium, social media can help to power experiential and participatory learning.  These capabilities are empowering, but isn’t there still a role for information dissemination and expert knowledge?

Our in-person version of social media  – with representatives of NCTI’s wide community of educators, technology specialists, innovators and entrepreneurial folks — explored the adoption and uses of social media from many perspectives.  We thought you might enjoy this collection of sound-bites direct from our discussion here in Washington, DC:

• Technology keeps on evolving.  We must ask more routinely ask how to apply,  but we’re still asking about how operate.
• Special power of digital media is that we can now be conversational — impossible using broadcast technologies
• Social media is enabling college level and secondary teachers to give up the idea that they know all and making assignments that ask students to “teach them”
• Power of social media making education more “experiential”
• Kids are driving  shift to technology.
• There is a “moat” between formal and informal instruction.
• If kids are helping to drive adoption of social media, how does this translate into policy changes that districts need to make?
• We must use research to show that mobile devices/social media go beyond social interaction to educational results
• Teachers find tech to be a burden.  Will reform be achieve through attrition?
• Adoption of education technology must not fall solely on the shoulders of  teachers – There are larger forces at work.
• We need practical solutions to address existing issues.  Do we put teachers in an awkward position because technology use requires policy and infrastructure changes?
• Are teachers Is technology use successful despite the system, or because of it?
• Teachers must use new skills.
• Analytics provide data to demonstrate efficacy.
• Teaching today is so scripted.  Must go beyond to teach technology.
• If you embed media in an intentional way, you can make a very big difference.
• We can address common concerns about social media by creating walled garden.
• NING, LMS like Moodle… Tools reflect a deep need for focused conversation.
• There is individual change and there is organzational change. Must be mindful of forces inhibiting organizational change.
• Is the role of ED  to provide R&D to support for integration of technology?
• Social media is a discussion medium, not focused on content dissemination.
• What do you do to get kids engaged in something?  Does giving a grade squelch passion of  students?
• Want to convey opportunity for students to make significant contribution… What makes the activity meaningful?
• Teachers say that some magic in gaming that must be applicable to the learning experience…
• Do we need to hold riveted attention every moment?  Perhaps not.  Teachers should look for “teachable” moments.
• What infrastructure needs to be in-place to support social media?
• Can we enable teachers to use technology without having to fight the system?
• What about students with disabilities?  IDEA says we need to be inclusionary, but without universal design are we not creating media that is exclusionary?
• Some great ideas in social media are coming from older teachers.
• There is not a choice, educators must upgrade their professional digital skills.