February 2011

digital immigrants Manuel Area. 2.0

Manuel Area has a blog:
http://ordenadoresenelaula.blogspot.com/

This entry that I copy here is really interesting.

2.0 How many teachers are in social networks in Spain? "Are there many or few?

When one participates and observes the place for discussion and social interaction tends to perceive that the number of teachers, both primary, primary, secondary, or university, entering daily or continuously on the Internet (via the PC, tablet or smartphone) is very broad and information that flowed quite high circulating through twitter or blogging. There is so much information generated by teachers in these social networks is hard to follow in their entirety. It seems that a significant number of English teachers begin to be active in cyberspace. But I fear that this is mere appearance, a mirage because if you look coldly and rational numbers, then the bills do not go. The conclusion is that, still, all teachers 2.0 is only a minority among the vast majority of existing faculty in the English educational system.

When contact with schools -Whether child / primary or secondary, or when I interact with colleagues from universities usual, majority is to meet with teachers who have become network users, but at a very basic email, browsing web, and in some cases to use virtually any type space-Moodle to support their teaching. But how many have their own blogs? How many participate in Twitter? How many subscribe to RSS? How many are active in any professional social network like Ning, Grou.ps or Elgg? How many published in Flirck on SlideShare or Youtube? I'm afraid the answer to these questions have to be somewhat optimistic, at least for now.

For almost three years I have tried to make up more or less rigor, social networks as spaces for self-education teachers. The first article I wrote on this subject was published in 2008 in the magazine Reason and Word. What we currently have data on participation of teachers (the school system, mainly) on the sites or social networks?. What I offer is only a little evidence that there can not be interpreted as inconclusive, but at least give hints or suggestions of what exists in January 2011. What follows is simply a sampling or tasting of what we found in two of the networks used in our country por el profesorado (NING y TWITTER). Como pueden observar no he cuantificado ni número de blogs de profesores ni de usuarios de Facebook. Estos son los datos que encontré:

En la red social Internet en el Aula de NING que es, hasta la fecha, la que aglutina al mayor número de profesores y profesoras españolas hay insctiros 7,168 miembros. A primera vista parecen muchos, pero si consultamos que el número docentes en el sistema escolar español, según el informe Datos y cifras. Curso 2010-11 del Ministerio de Educación (pag. 13 de dicho documento) es de 680.381, comprobaremos que poco más del 1% del profesorado español está en dicha red social.
Si, además como sugiere en su último JJ de Haro book about social networks, the trend is that as part of a network set up a participation model 09/01/1990, ie 90% of members are passive and hardly involved or connected, 9% involved as readers and consumers of information, but without, and only 1% are truly active participants subjects that connect on a regular basis and also to read, write, providing data, news, reviews, etc.., we would they only have less than 100 teachers as active members of the network. I suppose they are more! Let us now

TWITTER data from the other network where many teachers. For this I have selected some of the users who are very active in this network. The interesting thing is that Twitter has easily quantified the number of followers and people you follow. Yeah, who is a teacher, the tendency is to continue and follow him, other teachers. Therefore, this measurement allows us to infer the number of teachers enrolled in Twitter. These are the data in early January 2011 @ juandoming

5.351Siguiendo
4.857Seguidores
436Listas
@ jordi_a

1.810Siguiendo
3.523Seguidores
411Listas
@ gregoriotoribio

2.340Siguiendo
2.652Seguidores

@ pvil 291Listas

3.088Siguiendo
2.907Seguidores

286Listas
@ jjdeharo

819
Following 2.093Seguidores
272Listas
@ xaxartic

553Siguiendo
1.701Seguidores
196Listas
@ Olmillos

1.071Siguiendo
1.081Seguidores
118Listas
@ Isabel_Ruiz

743Siguiendo
858Seguidores

@ iferrer 87Listas

602Siguiendo
640Seguidores
84Listas
could go, but I think these data are sufficient: what just showed more followers who have targeted (juandoming) are little more than 4,000 people (which not all are teachers, not all English .) That is, we have a figure still below the Ning network "Internet in the Classroom" as quoted previously. In the rest of other assets of the number of Twitter followers or that are usually between 300-800 members, more or less.

data
I searched elsewhere. For example, in the wiki EduTwitter: Microblogging in education is targeted 626 teachers (from Spain and other Latin American countries) on the day I write this (1/11/2011), which confirms that teachers actually participating, more or lower activity in Twitter in Spain would be about five hundred, ie, over 500 teachers.

I have also consulted, a joint project undertaken by twitter teachers of our country, called The Shop Around the insane. Indeed, very interesting project and would recommend a visit. But the number of participants will not exceed one hundred, which is a proxy indicator for those who really write, and not just those who are listed on the network.

What can we conclude from all this?
The main conclusion is that participation in social networks is still a minority phenomenon among teachers quite English. We could even say it is a marginal phenomenon from a quantitative point of view that transcends just beyond the thousand teachers who are active in these networks. Which, in principle, it means nothing. Neither a positive nor negative. In any case, it is a very active minority, greatly concerned, very participatory, ... might even say that rarely or a little "freak" (in the kindest sense of the term).

One last thought: These data, which showed that the number of faculty members of the networks is small, should lead us to be cautious, restrained and avoid any kind of triumphalism about the power and influence of social networks in teaching . We are not as many as, at times, has a perception of feeling or experience it daily when connected to cyberspace. Every time one enters the network discovered and marveled at the overwhelming vast amount of tweets, messages, blogs, forums that emerge daily and published on the Web and it sometimes leads us to see mirages, to consider that a remarkable proportion of teachers is cyberspace. And, the data indicate that this is not true.

would therefore like to end by posing some questions for discussion: What do to visualize the 2.0 teachers' communicative activities beyond networks like Ning or Twitter? How to get more brothers and sisters come and participate in the existing virtual spaces? Did social networks really generalize education, or simply be a transitory phenomenon similar to what happened with the chat? Obviously I have no answers

PD also want to recommend the post last summer where XarxaTIC acknowledges that the number of English teachers in Twitter is very low (less than 1%)
Posted by Manuel Area at 16:39 12 comments Links this entry
Tags: teachers, web 2.0