A Week without the Web - going forward, not backwards

I'm going to be very interested to see the results of the experiment being conducted now by faculty and students in Hofstra's School of Communication: A Week Without the Web. I particularly like that this is a thoughtful encounter with the web; it's not just wishing it was 1990 again, it's a true educational exercise, reflecting on where we are, how we got here, and where we want to go in the future.

I'm already interested by the site's inaugural post. Clearly the School has been discussing this for a while, and clearly if they can do without the web for a week, they cannot do without cellphones.

This echoes something we've been talking about in faculty and student computing. How do we harness cell phones for learning? Can we or should we do so? I thought Liz Kolb's book Toys to Tools was an eye-opener. The book is geared for the K12 teacher and student, and it's full of exercises that students can do to create media in exercises to explore and understand. I'm always alert to what's happening in K12 - we don't want 21st century learning experiences for our students in gradeschool, but 19th century learning experiences in college. At least not all the time. Some 19th century learning experiences are undoubtedly valuable. (And I just finished Claudia Schiff's book on Cleopatra: A Life. Some 1st century BCE learning experiences might not come amiss either!)

This goes back to one of our core operational guideposts: it's not what the faculty member does differently with technology, it's what the students do differently. We all know that there can be great lectures, and great lectures enhanced with PowerPoint - but take away the PowerPoint and most great lecturers can certainly stand alone. Active learning is that in which the student does something differently - a creation exercise, or an exploration exercise, in which the student uses technology to find, create, or share in ways that they couldn't before.

This can be anything from an annotated bibliography shared and co-created via GoogleDocs to a collection of audio interviews that students peer-evaluate. And cell phones are clearly the one tool that can now do it all - and that almost no student is without.

What do you think about harnessing the power of cell phones for learning? Has the time come for your class?