Virtual Worlds: Learning and Teaching in a Digital Age

I am just now updating my session on “Online Social Networking” for this term, realising that I have to shift the entire focus. This is fine, because everything we do should be influenced by continuous research and thus by learning more about a subject – and possibly changing our opinions, as they become increasingly informed.

I was just thinking, with the blatant disregard that I often encounter, that I am actually encountering misunderstanding and fear. Good old fear. Perhaps of the unknown? Or of the not-understood? Social networking is not the “demon” Facebook or the “horror” of Bebo or “terror” of MySpace. Social networking has existed since humans have been able to communicate – I hazard a guess, well before language capability (and if anyone can point me into the direction of some good papers on this thought, I’d be grateful).

It is just that the Internet enables networking in an exponential way, and that – I wonder – seems to be threatening, or plainly overwhelming.

Of course, it might also be the not-understanding of a generation (the emerging generation/our current students/current teenagers) that grew up with the ability to be networked across the globe and not just across the nodes within a confined space (e.g. a school, village, sports club) and that sees Internet-enabled networking not only as a perfectly natural and normal everyday occurrence (I have the numbers to prove it ) but also as their right.

And rightly so. (excuse the bad pun)

It was a lot easier to control our (Generation X and older) access to social networks by authorities of any kind (parents “be at home from your friends at such and such ‘o clock”, school “let’s all come back into the classroom, no more playing outside during break”) and don’t we all remember breaking the rules and sending wee paper notes to our neighbours under our desks?

So … is it a question of (lack) of control that evokes the often quite emotionally charged negative/worried attitude by many who I encounter? Because it is beyond us? Out of our grasp? We cannot be part of it, or might not want to be part of it?

Is there indeed, fear, and inconvenience, and not-understanding?

How, then, do we connect the generations?