Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology

"Are you Hip to that Beat?" - informal session title.

Definition: "What is a non-traditional student?" Stereotypes: army ("hard-working"); executive ("task task task"); mom/parent returning to school; factory working who went straight to work after high school. Non-traditional students go back to school for themselves (goals) as opposed to traditional students who go in large part because of culture. (acknowledged as a generalization)

Point: The point was that non-traditional students may have very different drivers for social networking. If each non-traditional student is coming to this with different goals, what pulls them together: music, youtube, google mashup, google docs. "How do I mashup the vet, executive, mom, and blue collar worker with jing, google docs, youtube, etc.?"

Point: Need to pull out individual goals of students in order to really get to social networking. You can't just assume they all want "A's" or a promotion or a degree or to spend GI money or etc.... You have to get to know their individual goals in order to really have social networking.

(mini) Debate: "whether or not wikipedia is a social networking tool.” Brady says "yes." Brother says "No, because there's not a social interaction." Debate continued.

Blogger observation: Audience comprised largely of people very involved with the technologies being defined under the rubric of social networking. (e.g. many had met virtually in the weeks leading up to the conference and now sitting together.) Challenging questions: “Why is it important that Math students use social networking?” “Is one of your learning outcomes that students learn these tools?”

Audience discussion: Observation about people twittering about this discussion. Challenge raised about rudeness of typing during a session. Arguments and counter-arguments ensued.

Core Point: “Relationships develop from Common interests – provide and foster an environment, but it cannot be forced!”