The Wikiness

Like Stuart Mader, I enjoyed the way Thomas H. Benton“On Stupidity, part 2”describes the changing role of English teachers with their digital native students. We need to be flexible about the form of work we accept:

That doesn’t mean we should stop teaching the traditional essay and research paper, but it does mean we need to teach students to work in other genres, such as writing for blogs and wikis, creating podcasts and PowerPoint presentations, and participating in social-networking sites. They need to be comfortable in a variety of online environments, understand Web etiquette, know how to protect their privacy and respect the privacy of others, and learn how to evaluate various sources of information

And yet to teach with these learners requires a lot more work up front:

But such teaching requires a lot of time. It means being constantly available, developing intricate presentations, coming to class early to set things up, and staying afterward for conversations. It requires giving students careful feedback on writing assignments and rarely using multiple-choice and short-answer exams.

Finally, Benton (not his real name) gets that before anything, “digital immigrant” teachers need to let go the comfortable tools of our past and deal with the new digital world we’re living in,

[this sort of new teaching] requires looking for new ways to enhance learning rather than relying exclusively on what we already know.