Social Media Revolution & FYI Kids Don't Email

Last week Angela Maiers shared a video called Social Media Revolution 2. Social Media Revolution 2 is an update to the video Social Media Revolution which I blogged about last summer. Some of the statistics from the video that educators should be paying attention to are:

• "50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?"My comment: imagine what this means for education?
  
• "Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts."
• "2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction."
• Read all of the statistics here.
  

I was in a workshop last fall where we indirectly discussed the first two points above. One of the workshop participants complained that his students don't check email. He wanted to text his students, but his school, like mine and many others, bans the use of cellphones by students. As you might guess, I'm opposed to banning cell phone use by students. As I wrote last fall, cell phones enable teachers and students to get parents involved in a classroom activity. Most cell phones also provide a camera that students can use to take pictures for multimedia projects. Teachers can also use cell phones to collect feedback from students. And those students carrying smart phones, which I see more and more often, can access more information on their phones than can be found in a classroom full of books. So if students aren't checking the emails you send them, but they are using mobile devices, why are schools banning the use of mobile devices? Or as Lee Kolbert asked last week, when will we stop banning everything?

Here's the video.