 |
| Photo via Social Media Examiner |
It wasn’t always
this way. “Back in the day” you would be
reading this in a magazine or newspaper, printed on paper, and delivered to
your house every week or month. The concept
of a blog was reserved to a journalist, someone who attended school, received a
degree in Creative Writing and/or Journalism, and set out to create a career
based on writing. Now, one can become a
journalist with the click of a button and approximately $10 a year (to claim
your blog site domain). What
changed? People are more connected, yet
strangely more disconnected. We get our
news from Facebook’s News Feed and Twitter’s 140 character tweets. Now, by the time you turn on the 5 o’clock
news, it’s already old news. The way we
interact as humans has become faster, more immediate, and incredibly
responsive. We can talk directly to a
company about their products, deal with customer service situations on Twitter,
and all of this while on the go through the phone in our hand. It’s incredible really.
Even the concept of
education has changed, as you well know.
Students are able to take their classrooms with them while they travel
to compete as athletes. Snow days are a
thing of the past; as long as the Internet is still connected, it’s business as
usual for our students. Teachers are
able to be more responsive and available to support their students on an
individual level. The evolution of
interaction has certainly improved this aspect of our lives.
We are launching a
scavenger hunt game of sorts for our MEWA students to help them gage how much
they know about their school and on what platforms they are able to interact
with the MEWA community. This “Digital
Domination” game takes place totally online across the website, Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest, and this very blog.
Even the entry form is available online and will be submitted that
way. We believe our students to be
digital masters and hope this game encourages them to explore the digital space
that MEWA exists in. The game will
launch on March 7th and a winner will be selected on March 19. The prize?
Increased knowledge of the MEWA digital community…as well as a $50 gift
certificate to the Family Fun Center in Wilsonville. More information can be found here: http://gbwebacademy.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=310023.
The question remains whether or not this evolution of
interaction is completely for the better.
We have even asked that ourselves, and designed our school around an
education structure that continues to incorporate real-time, in-person learning
and development at our brick and mortar location. There is still a need for face-to-face human
interaction, for we are by nature social creatures. It’s important to remember to unplug and look
at the world around us, use our senses to discover new things. By balancing the technological evolution with
our true human instincts, we will maintain balance in the new age of
interaction.
Where do you interact
with others the most online? What about offline? Which do you prefer?
