Well ... it's time for another post. The last few weeks have been hectic with 30 June approaching so not much time for reflection. I did manage to catch up on the KNowledge Tree article by Dana Boyd http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/which got me thinking about how young people and youth culture is changing with the growth of mediated social networking. How does this impact on learning in VET? What are the expectations of young people when they 'walk' into a learning environment? Do they want to bring their mediated social networking culture and tools into the learning process? What will they think if technology is not used to mediate learning, when it is so much a part of their life experience?

As teachers, we need to

• be aware of the use of technology by our learners and engage with them on how they want to use it in the learning and assessment process. We have known of this need for a while - so there's really nothing new here!
• develop our own skills and comfort with the technologies - particularly with social networking and media-making tools
• examine our teaching practice and revise our strategies to enhance learner engagement, incorporate social networking and empower learners in the assessment process
• utilise learners as resource co-developers.

What are some doable steps to achieve or move toward this new learning?

• identify an assessment or learning task that can be adapted to incorporate social networking and/or media tools, eg use a wiki for a group project, have learners use their mobile phone cameras to photograph the product of a learning task and post to flickr, have a learner group collect weblinks in a class del.icio.us account, ask students to create digital stories that you can use as a learning resource/exemplar
• set aside 1/2 to 1 hour a week to explore social networking tools and new learning strategies - ideally do this with a team of colleagues
• find out what others are doing and learn from them (pinch/adapt ideas and resources and share back to the community)
• create your own blog or wiki to collect ideas and resources, to reflect, to model for your learners

Michael Coghlan's website 'New Technologies - New Learning' also provides an opportunity to engage in conversation on this topic: http://newlearning.wikispaces.com/

Are young people 'wired differently' and has learning process changed with technology developments? I'm not so sure. Maybe young people have always learned this way, but our teaching practice has not always matched up and social networking, mediation and technology have provided learners with a tool to learn in the way they choose. It exposes some of our inadequate teaching practices in a way that is hard to ignore. This offers a challenge to us for reflection, professional development and quality improvement in teaching and learning strategies.

What next I wonder ...