Snapchat, sexting and cyberbullying - What do we need parents to know?
Some of us were lucky to own a camera growing up and our teen years were punctuated by parents moaning about the time taken talking on the phone, via a landline. Callers who wanted to contact us would have to run the gauntlet with gatekeeping parents who answered the phone. How times have changed! With the advent of smartphones and tablets, young people are awash in visual images. Young people, now experts in multimedia production, curate photographs and videos that narrate their worlds. Immersed in a plethora of digital images, they use Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to story the minutiae of their daily lives. But what are the implications for educators? And how is this influencing the changing cultures of young people themselves? Snapchat is a disappearing media that was developed in 2011 and marketed to the 13 to 34 age bracket. With 100 million people using the application every day, it has taken hold among young people (Ingram, 2015). Although there has been a lot of research on Facebook, there are few studies into the use of Snapchat among young people and the implications for educators.
Authentic Virtual World Education: Facilitating Cultural Engagement and Creativity
The book presents the possibilities and realities of virtual worlds in education through the application of 3D virtual worlds to support authentic learning, creativity, learner engagement and cultural diversity in higher education. It includes a unique variety of cross disciplinary approaches to research, teaching and learning in a virtual world, including analysis of data from the experiences of students in education, law, Chinese language, sustainability, computer architecture, business, health and the Arts. The book provides unique learning experiences that have celebrated the rich media of virtual world environments through the utilisation of affordances such as simulation, bots, synchronous interaction, machinima and games. The perspectives come from Australia and New Zealand higher education academics but transferable to any higher educational institution in the sector, worldwide, and is significant to various disciplines in the higher education field.
Learning and Teaching in Second Life: Educator and Student Perspectives
Formal off-campus flexible learning has been a feature of higher education since the 19th century. The introduction of various educational technologies over the years has provided additional opportunities for learners to undertake courses offered anytime and in any location, providing greater flexibility for the development of cost-effective learner-centred curricula. With the emergence of 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life in 2003, educators are quick to realise the potential of such immersive environments to extend the flexible learner-centred approaches that have been a feature of off-campus learning over the decades. However, the benefits of technology-enhanced learning can be contradictory and incompatible and can both widen and reduce access to education. Despite the proliferation of articles attesting to the benefits of teaching in virtual worlds such as Second Life, until relatively recently, there has been a lack of empirical evidence reporting on the learning outcomes for students participating in these virtual learning sessions. Good pedagogical practices must be taken into consideration when educating in a virtual world. The case studies presented in this chapter aim to go some way in addressing this perceived gap in the literature. In this chapter, six authors from five Australian Universities provide their accounts of teaching in a virtual world and report on the learning outcomes as well as their students' perceptions of their learning experiences.
The Use of Wearable Technologies in Australian Universities: Examples from Environmental Science, Cognitive and Brain Sciences and Teacher Training
Innovation and increased access to wearable technologies are poised to inspire a new generation of technology-enhanced learning environments. Wearables provide students and teachers with hands-free access to contextually-relevant knowledge, which can be displayed as a 3D virtual world or overlaid on smart glasses, accessed via a smart watch or wristband, or used for providing biofeedback through EEG monitoring. A wide range of wearable devices is available, and it is often difficult for educators to introduce these advanced techniques into higher education contexts. This paper presents three examples of the kinds of educational applications that have been delivered in Australia and indicate key considerations for educators aiming to develop their practice and embed wearable tools into the classroom.
Snapchat 'selfies': The case of disappearing data
Little has been written about the impact of ephemeral messaging technologies such as Snapchat, Wickr and iDelete on learner identities. The authors explore how disappearing social media may enable young people to take up a range of discourses and demonstrate discursive agency in ways that support social mobility through shifting relationships with their peers. Much of this unfolds through the transmission of digital images that promote social flexibility. The visibility, of seeing and being seen, demonstrates a Foucauldian 'gaze' where power plays out through the capacity to be visible and recognisable to others and specific practices (e.g. selfies) become normalised. Social media technologies furnish emergent spaces for underlife activity that foster this gaze. Taking up the Foucault's concept of subjectivities as discursively constituted identity categories, the authors explore the relationship between disappearing media and youth identities.
A systematic review of literature of pedagogies to support high-ability students
The provision of rich and challenging learning opportunities is key to engaging high ability learners. There is a need to map the current state of the field in regard to the types of pedagogies that are deployed to address the needs of these learners. It is timely to synthesise pedagogical approaches to gifted education over the last 15 years. Reported is a systematic review of gifted and talented Education publications. The main aim was to investigate pedagogies that are suitable for use with high-ability students in Education settings. The literature was searched and appraised separately for inclusion criteria. A brief overview of research is presented that highlights the underpinning learning approaches that educators believe enhance the learning and achievement high-ability students. Implications for teachers, school leaders and the field of gifted education are discussed.
Teacher education when there are no students in class
Two words are dominating conversations, and if they aren't, the conversation quickly drifts back to the topic: COVID-19 and/or Coronavirus. At present, schooling systems and universities are moving at an accelerating speed to generate digital solutions to meet the challenge of physical distancing brought on by the pandemic. Because many Australian students are not attending schools in a face-to-face capacity, many thousands of initial teacher education students are unable to complete their professional experience placements and therefore their degrees. This will likely have a flow-on effect for getting graduate teachers into the classrooms and potentially exacerbate the teacher shortages being felt across Australia.
Snapchat has its risks but it's a powerful tool for youth creativity and socialisation
Charlene takes a picture of her dog with her smartphone and morphs his face onto hers to make a hybrid creature. She sends it to dozens of her friends and acquaintances. Over the next 23-hour period, 70 of Charlene's friends view it. Many reply with pictures of their own, some clutching dogs or cats, some with hybrid faces themselves. Some have accompanying text: "Aww weird!" or "That's an improvement!" It sounds like typical teenage high jinks, and it's all done via Snapchat, the ephemeral messaging app where posts are automatically deleted after a few seconds, or 24 hours if they're posted to the user's "My story" page.
Coming of the third wave: a move toward best practice, user defined tools and mainstream integration for virtual worlds in education
The Gartner Hype Cycle has placed virtual worlds on the climb up the Slope of Enlightenment. While some authors in the past have made much of the educational use of virtual worlds languishing in the Trough of Disillusionment, there has been a community of authors, designers and educators working to further understanding of the limitations and affordances of such technologies. It is time to pool this knowledge, experience, tools and practice to solidify best practice, focus research on development of specific elements and forge ahead to shape the third wave of educational virtual worlds. This paper attempts to outline this information and practice while offering solutions for further development.
Data in practice
Watch this video to see how data is considered and used at a secondary college in Melbourne. While watching, consider the following questions. Does our whole school approach to data collection and analysis for high-ability:
- value numerical data more than qualitative data?
- promote an understanding of the whole student?
- inform the teaching of high-ability students?
- include a process for ongoing data collection?
- include a process for ongoing and collaborative data analysis?