Cognitive Surplus: Reflection Five
After reading Cognitive Surplus, I feel like I should use my innovative juices to create the next big thing in social media with an emphasis on participatory features. I feel like this text was a help guide to take an original idea to develop a site that offers a place for people to conjugate to feed their intrinsic motivations while creating an online community. The problem: I do not currently have the next awesome idea such as Facebook, YouTube, etc. Instead of asking myself what is the next idea, I think I need to dig deeper after reading this text and ask myself why do I not have the next big idea? The answer is simple, according to the text: it has to do with how I spend my cognitive surplus otherwise known as free time.
The text was interesting in that Shirky compared an addiction to alcohol or gin to the problem of social media. Gin is not the problem, and social media is not the problem. The problem is the “reaction to… social change and the inability of older civic models to adapt (Shirky, 2010, pg. 3). This text made me realize that the gin today for my students in not the problem of social media such as texting, or skyping on cell phones in class. Instead, the problem is the structure and traditional model of education. This text has me questioning my pedagogies as an English teacher such as do my students really need to read Shakespeare, learn the plot diagram, etc. in the 21st century? The gin today for my students is that they are bored with the current educational structure because the current structure is not accommodating to their needs. The message that I was able to take away after reading this text was that students are no longer engaged in 19th and 20th century ways of learning. Students need to be taught how to become responsible individuals on the internet.
The gin is also how students and adults are spending their free time. Shirky points out that Americans watch over twenty hours of television each week (pg. 5). Twenty hours of staring at a screen with, for the most part, fictional characters and fictional lives. Television is the gin for many people in my generation. This shift is changing, however. “Young populations with access to fast, interactive media are shifting their behavior away from media that presupposes pure consumption. Even when they watch video online, they have opportunities to comment on the material, to share it with their friends, to label, rate, or rank it, and of course, to discuss it with other viewers around the world” (pg. 11). The current generation that we are teaching wants to spend their free time on the internet being participants, not just viewers. Students want to produce and want to share their ideas. I found myself asking if I am embracing and teaching to my students’ needs.
Shirky points out that his idea is that free time should be spent sharing ideas through social media. He proves that there is the mean, motive, and opportunity for people to spend their free time engaging on participatory sites and creating real life human connections through such sites instead of sitting and watching a television. I agree. Students obviously have the means with such sites as Facebook, Wikispaces, Google, etc. There are other sites that even provide needs for people to sell items or find a buddy to ride to work with. Sites such as Craigslist, PickupPal.com, Open.Salon.com, PatientsLikeMe.com, and Meetup.com are all participatory sites that allow people to engage in discussions. I found myself again thinking that having online discussions are great, but lose interpersonal face-to-face interactions. Shirky debunked that idea with that it doesn’t affect interpersonal face-to-face interactions because it “coordinates human contact and real-world activity” (pg. 38). This argument is not developed and weak. I wish he would have elaborated but that was it. I would counter his argument by simply referencing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and that human beings need touch that computer screens cannot produce.
Students have the means to use their cognitive surplus as well as the motive. This was an interesting part in the text in that he proves that people will try harder to satisfy their intrinsic needs instead of their extrinsic needs. He proves this with the experiment by Deci with Soma. Once Deci offered people money for currently putting the puzzle together, the motivation level went down. One would think the opposite. I was able to link this notion to my class. I often give students extrinsic rewards such as grades to complete an assignment. Deci, on the other hand, proves that notion wrong. “Doing something because it interests you makes it a different kind of activity than doing it because you are reaping an external reward” (pg. 72). Once something becomes work, people and students lose motivation. Grades are external rewards that are not working. I realize that students need to do well for themselves, but I wish the book helped guide an answer to how to teach students to work for their own benefit, especially without parent involvement.
Students have the means, motive, and also the opportunity to use social media during free time. “Given the right opportunities, humans will start behaving in new ways” (pg. 100) seems simplistic. Students, however, are not always given the opportunity at school to incorporate social media. If teachers used social media, the idea is that the intrinsic reward of learning and creating values will motivate students to complete assignments. “People had the opportunity to behave in a way that rewarded some intrinsic motivation, and those opportunities were enabled by technology” (pg. 101). The problem is that technology is not always reliable or available. Also, students do not also have the technology at home. Instead, some students only.have a television, not a computer to use as fun for free time.
A positive that social media is supposed to teach people is how to behave appropriately on the internet. The behaviors exhibited on social networking sites are important and teach students how to be civic and responsible human beings. Shirky points out that “how we treat one another matters, and not just in a ‘it’s nice to be nice’ kind of way: our behavior contributes to an environment that encourages some opportunities and hinders others” (pg. 135). Social Media can bring a group of people together from around the world and create a safe environment for people to share information and to provide honest feedback. This creates a group in the social world. This group will come together to share facts and emotions. The group will create communal values, public values, as well as civic values. Students, and people, will be open and eventually want to make the world a better place. I love the idea, but again I thrived for more. I wanted to know how.
The text ends with eleven ways to create, launch, and how to start incorporating social media into one’s life, which can be easily adaptable to the classroom. I like the idea of embracing the change from watching television as only viewers to spending my free time to participatory sites where I can become a part of an online community that teaches me values and can improve society as a whole. Sadly, I found myself watching television tonight. The book focuses on how one should build up free time to share ideas through social media and why one should. I no longer ask why, though. I now want to know how to create a whole curriculum that embraces social media without computers one hundred percent of the time. I also need to take my cognitive surplus and flood my free time on social networking sites and web 2.0 websites, so I become more familiar and confident with using these tools in the classroom.
Thanks for sharing your connections with the text, and your students. I think you had some good thoughts. I also found that the book was inspiring with how I thought of engaging my students, as well as, trying to think of the next exciting web tool!
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting that Shirky’s gin metaphor made you question your teaching down to the fundamentals of your content area. Whereas I defaulted to pushing back against the text and playing devil’s advocate to his ideas, you took his message to heart and questioned your instruction. I think that a balanced approach between these two responses could be most effective: it is important not to hang on to antiquated content and methods merely for the sake of it, but it is not pragmatic to throw out the baby with the bathwater either.
ReplyDeleteWe need to find new ways to harness the power of this movement and the capabilities of social media to present important traditional content. Students may lack the attention spans to interface with the written word, but the skills that studying language arts helps develop are still important in a modern world. Though school should not directly compete with entertainment, teachers do need to make material palatable, and a spoonful of social media sugar can help the Shakespearean medicine go down.
Of course, you are right to link Shirky’s idea that people will try harder at tasks that interest them than at tasks completed for a reward to the classroom. Offering external rewards for good performance beyond the intrinsic benefits of a job well done rarely leads to increased engagement, especially at the high school level. However, I too have trouble extrapolating educational answers to apply in the classroom. Many students are not grade-driven, and the ones who are do not enjoy learning as much as value its results. Unfortunately, the system is designed around this paradigm, and measures of student performance are becoming not only important to their lives, but the basis to judge you as an educator. We have to find a balance between operating in this system and promoting intrinsic learning by creating a participatory culture in our classrooms.
I enjoyed reading your reflection paper.
ReplyDeleteParticularly, when I read the sentence that you found yourself watching television sadly, I knew that you really wanted to adopt many of Shirky's ideas, not only to improve your teaching in classrooms but also to develop yourself in your life.
Also, I like your question about the use of social media, "I want to know how." That is also a hot topic among researchers and practitioners in the instructional technology and learning science fields, so it is not easy to answer. Maybe, you can find your own answer to the question based on your personal teaching experiences. Then, please share it with us later.