E-mail is becoming outdated for communicating with students as a new generation prefers more immediate forms of communication like social networks. While e-mail was once the primary way to connect online, teenagers now see it as only for formal business dealings. Social networks allow for more frequent and informal communication in real time as users can post updates and share content that appears instantly in their friends' streams, setting higher expectations for response times than email which occurs over hours.
Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over. In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold—services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate—in ways we can only begin to imagine.We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.
A new study shows that teens think e-mail is dead, with 80-percent relying on text messaging from their cell phones and most using messaging services from sites like MySpace and Facebook for casual communications. Even instant messaging (like AIM) is apparently considered passe, with today's youth apparently finally realizing it's sometimes very annoying to have random people chatting you up when you're trying to get something done. According to the study, teens do still use e-mail, but only for limited purposes, like sending files or -- *gulp* -- talking to an "elder". So, better get that Facebook account setup, grandpa
While email continues to grow, other types of communication services are growing far faster. In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. But the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to over 315 million people.So, how will these new tools change the way we communicate? Let's start with the most obvious: They make our interactions that much faster.
FacebookMore than 300 million active users 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.TwitterTwitter as an evaluation platform for student ratings. Every student had to send a tweet after each course unit with feedback to the teacher. Twitter turned out to be "a useful tool for evaluating a course formatively. Because of Twitter's simple use and the electronic handling of data, the administrative effort remains small.“At the University of Texas at Dallas, Twitter has been incorporated into the actual classroom setting of History courses with big groups of students. This innovative approach gives more students the opportunity to express their views in class discussions. Another advantage of this approach is that the limit of characters forces them to get to the central point.Students can follow our division pages on FB and Twitter
A division page has been createdInformation is updated weekly with posts about college/division eventsPhotos of facultyLinks are listed to important newspaper articlesStudents in Emerging Technologies classes create Facebook accounts and become a fan of the division pageStudents add me as a friend and can contact me by writing on my wall, sending me an Inbox message, or instant messaging me using the chat featureIssue with students not able to post an assignment in BB over fall break, student was able to IM in FB and we were able to “talk” about the problem on a Sunday afternoon. Student was very frustrated but I was able to calm her down and I was able to troubleshoot a problem that I would not have found out about at a later date if email was the only communication method available.
Tweets are updated weekly to keep students up-to-date on college/division eventsAll students in Emerging Technologies class create Twitter accounts and follow the B & IT divisionDownload app to smart phones or install desktop gadget
Skype created a little piece of software that makes communicating with people around the world easy and fun. With Skype you can say hello or share a laugh with anyone, anywhere. And if both of you are on Skype, it’s free. Skype is available in 28 languages and is used in almost every country around the world.Make calls from your computer - free to other people on Skype, cheap to phones and mobiles across the world. And the sound quality is great, too - keep it running all day, and it’s like you’re in the same room as the person on the other end.After a class on a Tuesday night one of my student’s saw that my Skpye icon was available, she had forgotten to ask a question in class so she IMed using Skype. We were able to “discuss” something she needed to do for her co-op position and was going to use Skype to call other colleges for her employer.Add a webcam and you can video conference. You can even catch up with all the messages sent by the group when you’re offline. The messages come up when you next log on to Skype so you need never miss a thing again.Typing indicatorInstant message chats with up to 100 people at once.Group IMs are a great way for lots of people to chat about all sorts of things. If there are a lot of people in a group IM it’s really useful to see who is currently writing a response. With the latest version of Skype there’s a useful feature that shows a pencil next to a contact’s name when they are writing something. Now you can tell at a glance who is about to respond in the group IM.
