Is texting killing language?

On of the issues we have discussed in our Open University online course Childhood in the Digital Age is whether texting is killing language.  Throughout the course we have been challenged to see ourselves as optimists or pessimists on various subjects.  We know that children learn by interacting with people around them and exchanging ideas, and texting, social networking or instant messaging can be important ways of communicating.  The problem, as the pessimists see it, is that people are now creating/inventing new modes of communication as texting is a sort of new language that is still evolving and as such is threatening or ruining standard written English.  Others argue that texting is simply converting spoken language to written language in a very interesting way.

In this TEDtalk John McWhorter argues that texting is not negative, but instead is highly creative and has cognitive benefits - he refers to it as "miraculous".  I've added the video below as I think it contains a very interesting perspective.  What do you think?  Does texting have a positive or negative influence on children's language skills?

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A pyramid of digital engagement and learning

In Week 3 of my Open University online course Childhood in the Digital Age, I came across Steve Wheeler's pyramid of digital engagement. In this pyramid Wheeler claims that engagement online is very similar to engagement offline. At the bottom of the pyramid people start with passive activities such as watching, reading and lurking. He writes that children start to learn by watching and listening to absorb what’s going on, followed by internalisation of the process to the point where it can be used creatively to develop their own ideas. 

The image is of a pyramid in five differently coloured layers, each containing digital icons. The bottom level contains the eye symbol and is labelled Watching/Lurking/Reading. This wide base shows that children are fairly passive in the initial stages of digital engagement, they are mostly using technology for entertainment or absorbing content from blogs, videos, podcasts and are observing what others are doing online.  The next layer up contains the thumbs-up symbol and is labelled Sharing/Liking. The middle layer contains a speech bubble with quotation marks and is labelled Commenting/Discussing. At this point children are starting to engage in a meaningful way online, as they think, edit and communicate ideas.  They start to respond to others' content by commenting on blogs, status updates or reviews and actively contribute their ideas.  The next to top layer contains the compasses symbol often used in authoring programs and is labelled Creating/Inventing.  At this point children are writing and publishing their own content on blogs or other sites such as YouTube.  The top layer contains lines of text and is labelled Curating.  At this point Wheeler writes: "Asking them to curate the content of others and add value to it can be even more challenging, but in doing so, they will usually read more widely, and are then in a position to assimilate multiple perspectives."

This is the first time I have seen this pyramid, but I find it very useful as a way of thinking about students' use of technology for learning.  I'm thinking this pyramid may be new to many others too, so I wanted to share it.  Click on the image to view it as a larger size.

Digital friendships

I watched a TED talk this week as part of my Open University course.  This was a talk by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, whose work on friendships and social groupings in 1992 resulted in "Dunbar's number" of 148, which is the number of friendships that people can maintain.  Over time, Dunbar has revised his theory based on the impact of social media, but it is interesting to note that even today, across 400,000,000 Facebook users, the most common number of friends that people have is between 120 and 130.  After hearing this I went and checked my Facebook friends and found I have 304 friends, however some of these are acquaintances I don't interact with at all, and the actual number of people I communicate with on a fairly regular basis is around 100, slightly less than Dunbar's number.  He argues that although we can in theory have thousands of global friends on social networks, the reality is that we are only regularly interacting with the same number of people  as our hunter-gatherer ancestors did.

He talks about concentric circles of friends.  These number 5, 15, 50 and 150.  The last circle is the "Christmas card list", those people we touch base with about once a year.  The inner circle of 5 friends (and only 4 if you are in a relationship) represents about half of our social time.  When you take the first 2 circles of 15 people, this represents around three quarters of our social interactions.  Dunbar talks about the number of friendships we can maintain being based on the size of our brain, in particular the social cognition circuit that lets us understand what others are thinking.  He asks if it is possible for this part of the brain to expand during childhood, perhaps as a result of increased numbers of online friends, and concludes that this is possible, though only up to the age of 20.  In general maintaining friendships takes a huge amount of time, as you need to invest time to get emotional closeness.

There are significant differences in males and females regarding how digital media can help maintain friendships.  Women account for about 2/3 of time on Facebook.  Men maintain friendships by doing things together rather than by talking.  Women, on the other hand, maintain friendships through conversations, therefore social media can maintain close friendships in women.  The most ideal technology for this is shown to be Skype, where there is a sense of co-presence and an immediate response.

I found this module of this week's course to be fascinating.  I'm looking forward to next week which is about learning to think in a digital age, where we will consider how different ways of thinking and learning behaviour might be emerging from an immersion in digital devices. 

Virtual friends in virtual worlds

This post is a reflection of my thoughts during week 2 of the Open University Childhood in the Digital Age online course.  This week we have looked at social media, gaming and virtual worlds.

One of the assignments this week involved watching a video in which Professor Lydia Plowman researched the way children learn through apps and games. Playing online appears to have many positive strengths, from learning new social skills to educational benefits, and she explained what parents can do to guide their children to unlock the learning benefits of technology as children learn how to learn by making their own choices and decisions.

Playing online not only provides creative opportunities and educational benefits for children, it also provides enormous possibilities for imaginative fun in virtual worlds, such as CBeebies, Music Worls and Moshi Monsters. Up to this point, I was not very familiar with any of these platforms which are aimed at primary school children, but I really want to investigate them, and possibly recommend them, to parents.  While both parents and children are enthusiastic about virtual worlds and online games, there are critics who are concerned about the risks of exposure to a wider community and worried that children have less time to spend on real-world play and more ‘meaningful’, face-to-face relationships.

What I learned this week is that in 2014 there were over 158 virtual worlds designed for children, with the top three for primary-age children being Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters and Habbo Hotel. In fact, an AVG Digital Diaries survey (2014) found that of the 6–9-year-olds surveyed, 46 per cent spent their online time playing in virtual worlds.  By solving a wide range of fun, daily puzzles they are able to gain new skills, including logic, spatial awareness, problem solving, numeracy and verbal communication.

Another thing that was discussed was how children can be anonymous in digital worlds in a way they can't in the real world.  They create new identities (avatars) so can invent and reinvent themselves in the different online spaces. Through virtual online play, children have access to a wider social community and can explore multiple aspects of themselves, including creating avatars that reflect their religion, culture and interests.

The positives and negatives of new digital opportunities

I'm now in week 2 of the Open University course Childhood in the Digital Age. This week we are looking at the positives and negatives of children using social media, online gaming and virtual worlds. Children thrive on forming connections with other people in their immediate social environments, and they learn to communicate and interact successfully using email, social networks, texts and tweets.  In the case of my own family, technology allowed my children to build relationships with their grandparents who were living in another country, as well as keep in touch with their friends when they moved on to other countries too.  Social networks allow children not only to connect to people within their own circle of face-to-face friends, but also to form connections with a much wider group of individuals all over the world.

On the other hand, it has also been pointed out that in expanding their social community, children are exposed to a wider range of people, material and risks, for example cyberbullying, trolling and sexting.  As children’s level of maturity and judgement is still developing, they are also more susceptible to marketing and inappropriate social interactions and of course there is the risk of children revealing too much information about themselves online.  Generally I feel most of these negatives can be reduced if adults are open to talking with children about the risks, about what should not be posted online and about what to do if they are exposed to inappropriate content online.

This week's course also discusses gaming and virtual worlds.  I'll be writing about these in an upcoming blog post.

Are computer games damaging children?

Today I have started an Open University course called Childhood in the Digital Age.  The first question asked was are computer games damaging children?  Here is what I was reading today:

In the UK, more than 80% of boys and also girls play some form of computer game every day. Dr Andrew Przybylski and colleagues at the Oxford Internet Institute surveyed nearly 5,000 British boys and girls aged 10-15 years.

They found that, compared to children who played no computer games at all, those who played for around an hour a day:

• had higher levels of sociability;
• were more satisfied with their lives;
• had fewer friendship and emotional problems;
• and were less hyperactive.

Overall, research findings in this area show that moderate time spent playing computer games is a positive experience for most young people socially and academically.

Excessive use (as with all excesses) can be detrimental. This reflects a tiny percentage of computer game players, but it is often the negative research findings based on extreme usage that are most widely published in the media.

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