Are You Net Smart?

 

Net Smart is a very informative, dense book with lots of practical tips and helpful suggestions, along with detailed anecdotes about the author’s experiences from the emergence of the online world until now. I appreciate that he’s interviewed the experts and consolidated his advice and techniques into one book, though it is a bit tedious at times. His postulates that the five digital literacies are: 1. Attention; 2. Participation; 3. Collaboration; 4. Critical Consumption (or “Crap Detection”); and 5. Network Smarts. Some of these ideas overlapped with The Information Diet.

I could easily pull dozens of skills that I would love to teach my third graders right now from the bulleted lists in the final chapter of the book, titled “How (Using) the Web (Mindfully) Can Make You Smarter.” Some of these points would benefit ALL users of the web and comment boards, like “Assume goodwill: when you think someone else is attacking you, it’s likely a misunderstanding.” Another gem from the Participation collection of bullet points is, “Crap detect thyself before broadcasting something as an assertion of fact.” Oh Snopes – what would we do without you?? I am most curious about the concept of training my attention. That is one of the things students and parents most often comment they struggle with. We are being hit from a hundred different directions with a constant barrage of information, communication, and distraction. It’s no wonder our attention spans are not better than they are – students and adults alike! In the 15 years since I started teaching, I’ve noticed that my teaching style needs to incorporate more moving, videos, or other devices to hold attention. Our classroom presentations need to be flashier to hold our students’ waning attentions.

How do the concepts from Howard Rheingold impact my practice? I would like to reread through the Attention chapter and the bullet points and select a few to start teaching my students to help them be more technologically literate individuals. We always hear that “these kids today are great at technology.” What we always notice in the classrooms is that yes, they can use technology to distract themselves, and they can use apps and games, or change settings, but when it really comes down to their skills, they are not able to produce things with technology. Being consumers is one skill, but being producers able to create goods that others will actually want to download or buy is a much more useful skill. Employers don’t want job candidates who can surf the web, play games, complete online quizzes, and post to social media. They need employees who add value to their companies by leveraging the technology available to them to produce things, but who are also skilled at collaborating and communicating appropriately in person and virtually. These are no small tasks, since many teachers in classrooms are not proficient at these skills either (not because they can’t, but because they don’t have the technical experience). Being able to network and complete tasks virtually connected through the cloud or other program is one that our current students may be required to do daily, but for now is a novel task that not many of us teachers have tried out yet. I think one of the most important things I took out of the attention chapter is not necessarily about technology – it’s about mindfulness: stopping to pay attention to what is going on now. It’s also about setting goals. These are things that I can try to teach my students whether I have access to the laptop cart or not, and I know I would benefit from it as well!