Digital Learners: Introduction

It is folly to ignore the educational effects of digital personification. The social network is pervasive in every aspect of the digital learners life. The impact of the digital environment on the education and socialization of the student is immeasurable. They are learning through collaboration and social networking sites now.

Educators cannot turn a blind eye to this trend. Blocking social networking sites at the firewall and covering our ears will not make it go away. It is imperative to learn these tools for ourselves and find a way to incorporate them in the curriculum in a way which they are relevant.

This discussion requires a distinction between the kinds of social networking and their perspective adherents. The social networking concept can be divided into societal and digital forms.The distinction is helpful only in analysis of the differences as they are interdependent in practice.

The digital social network architect defines the persona through web based tools and digital presence. The architect uses the push-pull internet based social networking tools to construct a narcissistic representation of himself. He is literally an architect that creates and recreates himself. Others can come to him.

The societal social networker, to coin a term, defines the self within a realm of face to face relationships. These relationships define the nature of the social networker in the realm of 'society'. The 'societal' self defines and redefines themselves in terms of their relationships to others.

This document will explore the Digital Self in 3 parts:

Part 1: The Evolution of Social Networking

Part 2: The Digital Self

Part 3: The Digital Classroom

The term "Digital Learners" is borrowed from Growing Up Digital - John Seely Brown

Part 1: The Evolution of Social Networking

The LAN Party

Digital Social Networking can trace it humble beginnings back to the concept of the "LAN Party". A LAN party is a group of people that bring their computers together to a single location to play a game on a local network. During the heyday of the LAN Party it was impractical and expensive to play these games over the Internet due to costly Internet access and slow dial-up speeds. Games, war games most likely, in a multi-player environment required bandwidth that was unavailable at the time. LAN Parties were a way around those limitations.

The digital social networking of a LAN Party have many aspects:

Single purpose digital environment
Real time interaction to digitally simulated events
Real time communication
Digital personification definition limited to predefined role.
Social networking is primarily societal with limited digital interaction
Localized limited demographic of relationships
Limited availability

~~#Societal idioms and mannerisms are implicit and without clear definition~~

Single purpose digital environment:

The purpose of the digital environment is driven by the nature of the game. The game defines goals and purposes of the digital personal. The single use environment is impractical for purposes outside of its predefined limits. First person shooters are not conducive to casual conversation. It is not wise to chit-chat in front of a horribly mutated alien creature with a voracious appetite that missed a meal or two.

Real time interaction with digitally simulated event:

The LAN Provided the bandwidth to allow for real time interaction with the digital environment. Simulated events responded simultaneously with user input. Rolling to the left while being fired at and sniping at your neighbor happed as both acted and reacted to the digital simulation.

Real time communication:

This was facilitated by talking around the table. Odds are the guy next to you that just wiped you out was going to hear a earful pretty quickly.

Digital personification definition limited to predefined role:

The creation and embellishment of the digital personification were limited to the predefined roles in the games architecture. The goals and purpose of the digital personification are limited by the context of the game. Predefined roles limited to the predefined context of the game. The roles are action oriented. They are not designed for who the digital persona represents or who he is.(Being) They are designed for a limited function with in the context of the game. The roles were defined for what the digital persona was for. (Doing)

Social networking is primarily societal with limited digital interaction.

Networking was societal by default. Social networking developed around the table.

Localized limited demographic of relationships:

The social networks were limited to the local area. Availability of transportation and driving distance coupled with curfews limited the pool of potential players.

Limited availability:

The required resources, mobility, scheduling conflicts, availability of space limited the availability of the social networks.

The very nature of the LAN Party limited its growth. The impracticality of porting heavy and expensive equipment coupled with the advent of broadband to the desktop ended its prominence.

The Emergence of Digital Social Personification with Disparate Tools

The digital persona in its infancy was a conglomeration of of disparate tools. They were one way and helped little in collaboration. The personal web page was static and could only be manipulated by the owner. Email limited the digital social environment to few friends and spam almost cost email it's usefulness. Instant messaging suffered from scheduling issues and forums are the equivalent to leaving a message on an answering machine.

These limitations aside the digital persona began to emerge. Forums were among the first tools to begin to embrace the concept of a digital identity. Within the forum a personal profile could be created and interest could be shared. Forums still suffer from the problems of Gaming Networks. Although a digital identity could be formed, it was still within the framework of the topic or the reason for the forum. It was more about doing than being.

Websites turned to blogs where a digital persona could be detailed and completely narcissistic.

Part 2: The Digital Self

Digital Existentialism: The Digital Identity Crisis

In many ways the Digital Social Network Architect is more like a late 20th century existentialist philosopher. A necessarily narcissistic creator of his own self, he lives in a digital world where meaning is a social construct and his very existence redefined in a keystroke. The Digital Social Network Architect lives in a constant identity crisis. So dependent on the social ramifications of his own digital persona against the socially constructed framework of being that a slight motion in the framework requires immediate action. Fortunately the tools from the “Second Life Tool kit” keep him firmly up to date and ready to propagate or mitigate changes with speed and ease.

Tools of Digital Definition

Myspace and Facebook – Who am I?

Second Life – What do I look like? Where do I live?

The Second Life Tool Kit: Keeping up with the digital self real time.

Some Tools

RSS Feeds – Real time notifications

SMS – note to self

Texting – burst from u to me

Part 3: The Digital Classroom

The Virtual World as a Classroom

Online learning in the classroom: not-so-distant learning

The "Second Life" campus

IMVU classrooms

Web 2.0 immediate relevance in the classroom

Blogs: Relevant content

del.icio.us: Social Bookmarking

Diigo: lesson plans on websites. Annotate the web.

Google Docs: Collaborative documents

YouTube: Video lessons

DimDim: Collaborative learning environments

Virtual operating systems: The g.ho.st in the machine

Wikis: Collaborative course work.

Twitter: Between IM and Blogging

Open Curriculum: Its not what we know but what we can do.

Changing the Classroom Together

Shared Resources

World wide lesson plan collaboration

Open curriculum resources