Meatspace Skills and Online Psychology

My first post here for 18 months. It feels fitting that the subject of my last post, Gareth Davies, inspired me to fire up the old blog through his comment at  Silverstone Study Centre, where I have been spending most of my on- and offline time.

Some Year Two pupils recently visited and demonstrated a remarkable ability to appear actively attentive with their eye contact and body language. Not only were these pupils ‘hanging on my every word’ as I explained activities and interacted with them but they also made the choice to show me that they were ‘bothered’ using their soft skills toolkit, both individually and as a group.

These ‘soft skills’ had been explicitly taught and continually encouraged in authentic contexts, extending far beyond the traditional ‘sit up straight, arms folded’ approach that is often drummed into students when ‘paying attention.’    This explicit level of attention is not always often my experience and some groups of much older children have little idea of how to show that they are interested – even if the vast majority are generally extremely excited by the prospect of learning at Silverstone.

If these basic social skills are not ‘unpicked’ for young people in ‘meatspace’ then how are they expected to read people and situations in the virtual world? Gareth  sums up the challenge for educators.

If we, as educators, don’t unpick real-world body language techniques such as eye-contact with students, then it’s very unlikely that we’ll consider teaching them online techniques for being understood clearly and precisely in that environment.

Gareth’s overview post about the ‘Psychology of Cyberspace’ is a very useful starting place for a flavour of  the issues that we need to teach and learn. This sort of skill set demands far more than  simple ‘e-Safety’ or ‘digital literacy’ soundbytes and is best understood and implemented from a solid foundation of  ‘meatspace’ social skills.

Do you want a totally unscientific overview measure of your pupils ‘meatspace’  social skills? Get them to shake hands with you and each other – it’ll be enlightening or reassuring – possibly both!