I have had an idea brewing over the past month or so, which I had intended to submit as my game design assignment - but with the Digital Earth competition taking this over, have just decided to note down the bones of it here.
*Welcome to Digitalia*
The main aim of this website-based game is to teach teachers about digital functions that young people use all the time, giving them direct practice and ideas for educational use.
Digitalia is a fictitious country in which children are the main inhabitants (or 'natives'). The home page contains links to information about some of the customs (social networking, blogging, Web 2.0 functions, games, etc), artefacts (internet, iPod, computer, etc) and some of the learning preferences (teamwork, parallel processing, hypertext thinking, etc) of the Digitalia Natives (DNs).
It also has a Visa application process for Digitalia Immigrants (DIs) who want to access the country. As part of the application process, teachers (or whoever) mustcomplete a series of tasks/games/challenges, each relating to technology and Web 2.0 functions such as blogging, making podcasts, using Del.icio.us, Wikis, and Google Earth, etc., which relate to how they might be integrated into teaching practice.
The game is also designed to encourage some of the skills needed to flourish in the information age, such as:
Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details
Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
Networking — the ability to search for,synthesize,and disseminate information
Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities,discerning and respecting multiple perspectives and grasping and following alternative norms.
(taken from NML white paper - see below)
There is also scope for automated character interaction via email, video, audio, etc. However, unlike most popular ARGs which unfold in real-time (Perplex City for example), this is designed for individual players to go through at their own pace (like BBC's Jamie Kane), though some team-working with other applicants will be required.
Once the visa application process is complete, the older generation can become Digitalia Natives themselves!
[This game links in with some of the work carried out by the New Media Literacies project, which seeks to identify and inform teachers about the various skills required for the information age, as well as helping 'children to learn what they need to know to become fuller participants in the new media landscape. NML combines an interesting group of researchers and educators, including Henry Jenkins (Convergence Culture, 2006) and Ravi Purushotma, who have done much research into the educational potential of digital games, and ARGs especially.
They have recently produced the NML White Paper (2007), which goes into great detail about children's media use and the related skills they are developing in using internet-linked technologies - skills that are well-suited to a forthcoming knowledge economy, but which currently schools are failing to address. The paper coins the phrase *Participatory Culture* to describe the younger generation's practice of creating and sharing media content. The paper explains that 'a participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another'. The point about informal mentorship is particularly interesting from an educational perspective, as this describes a peer-to-peer learning process that many teachers (the good ones at least) would love to see from their students. Other potential benefits of a participatory culture include 'the diversification of cultural expression, the development of skills valued in the modern workplace [see Gee, Hull and Lankshear 1996, 'The New Work Order'], and a more empowered conception of citizenship'. These are all benefits that teachers really ought to be capitalising on, and a game like Welcome to Digitalia might be a useful tool for helping them do this.]
Showing posts with label digital divide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital divide. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 April 2007
Monday, 12 March 2007
Level 9 - Diminishing the Digital Divide revisited - Games to bridge the Generation Gap
Articles by Prensky, Oblinger and Squire, a recently published Demos article entitled 'Their Space: Education for a Digital Generation' (Green and Hannon, 2007), plus several other commentators, all highlight a significant difference between current generations in terms of their familiarity with computers, the internet and technology (or lack of it). This raises important issues for educators at ALL levels, in particular how these technologies can be put to best use in order to engage students without creating a 'digital dependence' where human relationships and overall learning might suffer. One way of engaging both students *and* teachers with digital technology is through games - and it is a potential that games have to bridge this divide that I want to explore further here.
To recap briefly on this digital disparity, Oblinger draws up 3 general but useful distinctions between generations and their understanding and comfort with ICTs (this includes internet use): Boomers, the 40+ age group, might be classed as 'digital migrants', or those who did not grow up surrounded by computers and associated technology, but had to learn about them at a later stage; Gen-Xers (which I fall into) who were the first generation to grow up with (albeit rudimentary) computers and who are the first 'digital natives'; and Millenials, or 'digital natives 2.0' who were born after 1982, and who are completely au fait with computers, internet and associated linking gadgets such as mobile phones, iPods etc. Millenials have also been classed as Generation-C - where C stands for Content - meaning that for this generation, creation of 'consumer generated content plays a significant role in their social life, generating streams of new text, images, audio and video on an ongoing basis'. These characterisations are extremely useful for educators of the Boomer generation who wish to better understand and inform the younger generations, and to an extent vice versa.
If responsibility to adapt rests with one generation more than another, it must surely be more with teachers than with students (though teachers will probably disagree), as digital proficiency is becoming the dominant paradigm. When pupils enter the job market, a large number of roles (in developed countries at least), will involve some basic technological know-how. So for teachers to do their job well nowadays, it's becoming more necessary to adopt methods that inform and appeal to what might be termed the "information-age mind-set." As Oblinger writes, 'the attitudes - and aptitudes - of students who have grown up with technology appear to differ from those of students who rarely use technology." She cites Jason Frand, who lists ten key attributes of this emerging mind-set: "[1] Computers aren't technology; [2] Internet is better than TV; [3] Reality is no longer real (re: potential inaccuracies of digital content); [4] Doing is more important than knowing; [5] Learning more closely resembles Nintendo than logic; [6] Multi-tasking is a way of life; [7] Typing is preferred to handwriting; [8] Staying connected is essential; [9] Zero tolerance of delays; and [10] Consumer and creator are blurring." These all combine to highlight fairly significant changes in how young people process information. Charles Monereo (The virtual construction of the mind: the role of educational psychology, 2004) explains this cognitive change well. "Just as steps from oral culture to written culture and then from writing into printing had clear repercussions for forms of learning and thinking, the transition from the printed culture to this new digital culture will have diverse consequences for our cognition". As Prensky has also recognised, DN's cognitive processes have been moulded by their immersion in a digital environment.
In particular, point [4] above marks a giant step, where knowledge accumulation needs no longer be a principle goal of education, as information can be easily accessed and needn't necessarily be stored in an individual's brain (see Gee 2003 on *distributed knowledge*). Monereo again, describes this distinction, writing that "technological migrants [Boomers] regard knowledge as something that they possess, something that they carry around with them; technological natives [Gen-X onwards] see it as something that they obtain through a set of applications and instruments. This distinction modifies substantially notions such as intelligence, wisdom and ability." This change also has significant epistemological ramifications. Once again Monereo raises this issue. "For the older generation there have always been universal truths, both scientific and moral... But for the younger generation, "everything depends"; all truths are relative and depend on who, when, how, and why they are stated; they are never independent of their utterer or their context." This is a considerable, and I think exciting, philosophical change that teachers must accommodate - teaching that knowledge is absolute will not convince our young learners; they will want to explore the bigger picture, and then make their own minds up. [See the excellent Civil War History Game, cited by Oblinger, which provides students with a broad range of documents relating to the civil war, encouraging them to view sources as a multitude of opinions, not facts, and to synthesize a broad range data to form opinions of their own.]
I also feel that Frand's point [5] above, 'Learning more closely resembles Nintendo than logic', also points to a growing problem that teachers face - how to engage students in ways that complex problem-solving computer games might, with high levels of interactivity, a compelling narrative and a multimedia experience. Recognising and accomodating these changes will I think prove to be an important challenge for teachers over the coming years, moving away from linear, textbook-based learning, to classes that, in Oblinger's words, 'give way to simulations, games and collaboration'. To address this problem, teachers must recognise that Millenials exhibit distinct learning styles, as Clare Raines suggests in 'Managing Millenials'. Millenials' learning preferences embrace "teamwork, technology, structure, entertainment & excitement [and] experiential activities", which differ significantly to those of the Boomer generation when they were at school, which reflected an older paradigm of individualism, knowledge acquisition and rote learning. And here lies a challenge faced by Boomers in management positions in schools, colleges and universities: how can they tailor the way that teaching and learning is presented to engage the students of the tech-generations, while also inspiring teachers of an older paradigm? If they do not, there is a danger of disenfranchising large numbers of young people, and teachers too, perhaps even turning them off from education completely.
If we look closely again at the learning preferences of both generations, we can see them mirrored in the qualities of a well-designed game, paticularly ARGs. *Good* games will often involve teamwork, technology, entertainment, excitement and experience, but *will also embrace* individualism and knowledge acquisition. For examples of such games see The Go Game, Futurelab's Savannah and MIT's Augmented Reality Games, and for a clear example of individualism and teamwork combined, see this BBC article about the winner of Perplex City. Games therefore have the potential to appeal to learning preferences on both sides of the divide, so long as they are well designed. And while gaming is never likely to be the primary pedagogic methodology, games have the (in my limited view) unique potential for uniting both natives and immigrants in a digital and non-digital cause.
But as Squire writes (Changing the game, 2005), 'as challenging as it is to design a good educational game, it may be more challenging to design a good educational system for an educational games to flourish in'. Changes are likely to be slow, but as Green and Hannon point out (2007), change is becoming more necessary. 'In an economy driven by knowledge rather than manufacturing, employers are already valuing very different skills, such as creativity, communication, presentation skills and team-building. Schools are at the front line of this change and need to think about how they can prepare young people for the future workplace.' Squire (2005) also comments on this need for change (citing Gee, Hull, and Lankshear 1996; and Reich 1990), writing that 'learning to identify problems and then devise solutions across several domains is uncommonly found in school, but precisely the kind of skill valued among knowledge workers in the new economy'. With business influencing much of school policy decision-making nowadays (which is another discussion altogether), it is likely that schools will be pushed into better preparing students for this 'new capitalism' or knowledge economy. And the great news for students, which teachers must eventaully recognise, is that digital games appear to instill precisely the qualities that knowledge workers require.
[The UK government recognises the skills required for enterprise which is a step toward the skills mentioned above. See the Determined to Succeed initiative for Scotland's answer to encouraging enterprise, team-working and ambition]
To recap briefly on this digital disparity, Oblinger draws up 3 general but useful distinctions between generations and their understanding and comfort with ICTs (this includes internet use): Boomers, the 40+ age group, might be classed as 'digital migrants', or those who did not grow up surrounded by computers and associated technology, but had to learn about them at a later stage; Gen-Xers (which I fall into) who were the first generation to grow up with (albeit rudimentary) computers and who are the first 'digital natives'; and Millenials, or 'digital natives 2.0' who were born after 1982, and who are completely au fait with computers, internet and associated linking gadgets such as mobile phones, iPods etc. Millenials have also been classed as Generation-C - where C stands for Content - meaning that for this generation, creation of 'consumer generated content plays a significant role in their social life, generating streams of new text, images, audio and video on an ongoing basis'. These characterisations are extremely useful for educators of the Boomer generation who wish to better understand and inform the younger generations, and to an extent vice versa.
If responsibility to adapt rests with one generation more than another, it must surely be more with teachers than with students (though teachers will probably disagree), as digital proficiency is becoming the dominant paradigm. When pupils enter the job market, a large number of roles (in developed countries at least), will involve some basic technological know-how. So for teachers to do their job well nowadays, it's becoming more necessary to adopt methods that inform and appeal to what might be termed the "information-age mind-set." As Oblinger writes, 'the attitudes - and aptitudes - of students who have grown up with technology appear to differ from those of students who rarely use technology." She cites Jason Frand, who lists ten key attributes of this emerging mind-set: "[1] Computers aren't technology; [2] Internet is better than TV; [3] Reality is no longer real (re: potential inaccuracies of digital content); [4] Doing is more important than knowing; [5] Learning more closely resembles Nintendo than logic; [6] Multi-tasking is a way of life; [7] Typing is preferred to handwriting; [8] Staying connected is essential; [9] Zero tolerance of delays; and [10] Consumer and creator are blurring." These all combine to highlight fairly significant changes in how young people process information. Charles Monereo (The virtual construction of the mind: the role of educational psychology, 2004) explains this cognitive change well. "Just as steps from oral culture to written culture and then from writing into printing had clear repercussions for forms of learning and thinking, the transition from the printed culture to this new digital culture will have diverse consequences for our cognition". As Prensky has also recognised, DN's cognitive processes have been moulded by their immersion in a digital environment.
In particular, point [4] above marks a giant step, where knowledge accumulation needs no longer be a principle goal of education, as information can be easily accessed and needn't necessarily be stored in an individual's brain (see Gee 2003 on *distributed knowledge*). Monereo again, describes this distinction, writing that "technological migrants [Boomers] regard knowledge as something that they possess, something that they carry around with them; technological natives [Gen-X onwards] see it as something that they obtain through a set of applications and instruments. This distinction modifies substantially notions such as intelligence, wisdom and ability." This change also has significant epistemological ramifications. Once again Monereo raises this issue. "For the older generation there have always been universal truths, both scientific and moral... But for the younger generation, "everything depends"; all truths are relative and depend on who, when, how, and why they are stated; they are never independent of their utterer or their context." This is a considerable, and I think exciting, philosophical change that teachers must accommodate - teaching that knowledge is absolute will not convince our young learners; they will want to explore the bigger picture, and then make their own minds up. [See the excellent Civil War History Game, cited by Oblinger, which provides students with a broad range of documents relating to the civil war, encouraging them to view sources as a multitude of opinions, not facts, and to synthesize a broad range data to form opinions of their own.]
I also feel that Frand's point [5] above, 'Learning more closely resembles Nintendo than logic', also points to a growing problem that teachers face - how to engage students in ways that complex problem-solving computer games might, with high levels of interactivity, a compelling narrative and a multimedia experience. Recognising and accomodating these changes will I think prove to be an important challenge for teachers over the coming years, moving away from linear, textbook-based learning, to classes that, in Oblinger's words, 'give way to simulations, games and collaboration'. To address this problem, teachers must recognise that Millenials exhibit distinct learning styles, as Clare Raines suggests in 'Managing Millenials'. Millenials' learning preferences embrace "teamwork, technology, structure, entertainment & excitement [and] experiential activities", which differ significantly to those of the Boomer generation when they were at school, which reflected an older paradigm of individualism, knowledge acquisition and rote learning. And here lies a challenge faced by Boomers in management positions in schools, colleges and universities: how can they tailor the way that teaching and learning is presented to engage the students of the tech-generations, while also inspiring teachers of an older paradigm? If they do not, there is a danger of disenfranchising large numbers of young people, and teachers too, perhaps even turning them off from education completely.
If we look closely again at the learning preferences of both generations, we can see them mirrored in the qualities of a well-designed game, paticularly ARGs. *Good* games will often involve teamwork, technology, entertainment, excitement and experience, but *will also embrace* individualism and knowledge acquisition. For examples of such games see The Go Game, Futurelab's Savannah and MIT's Augmented Reality Games, and for a clear example of individualism and teamwork combined, see this BBC article about the winner of Perplex City. Games therefore have the potential to appeal to learning preferences on both sides of the divide, so long as they are well designed. And while gaming is never likely to be the primary pedagogic methodology, games have the (in my limited view) unique potential for uniting both natives and immigrants in a digital and non-digital cause.
But as Squire writes (Changing the game, 2005), 'as challenging as it is to design a good educational game, it may be more challenging to design a good educational system for an educational games to flourish in'. Changes are likely to be slow, but as Green and Hannon point out (2007), change is becoming more necessary. 'In an economy driven by knowledge rather than manufacturing, employers are already valuing very different skills, such as creativity, communication, presentation skills and team-building. Schools are at the front line of this change and need to think about how they can prepare young people for the future workplace.' Squire (2005) also comments on this need for change (citing Gee, Hull, and Lankshear 1996; and Reich 1990), writing that 'learning to identify problems and then devise solutions across several domains is uncommonly found in school, but precisely the kind of skill valued among knowledge workers in the new economy'. With business influencing much of school policy decision-making nowadays (which is another discussion altogether), it is likely that schools will be pushed into better preparing students for this 'new capitalism' or knowledge economy. And the great news for students, which teachers must eventaully recognise, is that digital games appear to instill precisely the qualities that knowledge workers require.
[The UK government recognises the skills required for enterprise which is a step toward the skills mentioned above. See the Determined to Succeed initiative for Scotland's answer to encouraging enterprise, team-working and ambition]
Saturday, 20 January 2007
Level 3 - We can't ignore the prevalence of digital technologies
Marc Prensky's articles on Digital Natives (DNs) and Digital Immigrants (DIs) raise some important issues, not just in the field of e-learning, but in education in general. If there really is a marked difference between the cognitive processing of children and their teachers as he claims, that 'today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach', then it follows that our current education system must be completely overhauled to accommodate this change. If we concede that DNs *do* communicate differently, act differently, think differently and learn differently, then the entire education system must 'go digital' to accommodate these changes. But are these radical changes really necessary?
In the terms of Oblinger's article 'Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millenials', I would class myself as being a Gen-Xer, being really the first generation to have computers in schools and games consoles at home. This puts me in a good position to notice the difference between my parents' generation, the Baby Boomers, and the younger Millenials. The world of the Millenials, in terms of their immersion in digital technologies, compared to my own and especially the Boomer's childhood is striking: a single mobile phone can nowadays play music, games and videos, can take pictures and make films, can download information about latest news or sports events, can store data including contact details and diaries, can work as a GPS locator to help find directions, can be used as a calculator, can send SMS and get this... can even and phone someone anywhere in the world. Most kids nowadays will have all these functions at their fingertips, whereas a few generations ago, to have all these functions you would need a whole host of equipment, and pay a considerable amount for it. And this is just the phones - when you take into account the prevalence of cable TV, games consoles, internet and PCs, it is clear that for a young person nowadays, *digital is everywhere*. And yet mainstream education seems to almost ignore this reality completely.
The distinction between DNs and DIs is extremely useful in offering a explanation of these different paradigms, and why there might be tension between them. DNs think traditional teaching methods are boring and old-hat compared to the glut of cutting edge digital entertainment that they're used to; on the other hand DI teachers do not appreciate the value of digital material out there and accuse the young of being unco-operative or simply stupid when they get quickly tired of 'chalk-and-talk' teaching practices. On the whole, DI teachers make no effort to, or are simply unable to adapt teaching practices to get anywhere close to the kind of digital environment that DNs are used to. Having spent the last two years working in secondary schools myself, I have heard many staffroom conversations centred around how 'kids of today are different', 'they were never this bad!'; and while it might be argued that teachers have always complained that 'kids weren't like this in my day', even teachers who have taught for generations will maintain that the current generation is *significantly* different. This disparity is leading to a number of problems in education: teachers are becoming demoralised, students are disengaged and worst of all, an entire generation is being ill-prepared for their post-school lives.
Perhaps the hardest lesson is that it is up to the DIs, not the DNs, to change. The DNs are growing up into a world where digital technologies will become more prevalent, becoming the dominant paradigm. To embrace this development, not only must current teaching practices change, but the teachers themselves must re-learn much of what they've been taught. This is likely to be a painful task. My own rather pessimistic view is that apart from a few early adopters, the education system will not fully 'go digital', until the current generation of DNs become teachers themselves. [Research into scientific paradigm changes by Thomas Kuhn ['The structure of scientific revolutions], points almost unanimously to the likelihood that proponents of an old paradigm will rarely change to embrace the new, but will challenge it to the end. A good example was Einstein, who was lampooned by Newtonians when he introduced his theories of relativity, then went on to lambast Nils Bohr and others who presented quantum mechanics.] Prensky's appeal that we need to 'invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us' is absolutely necessary if we are to do our students justice, but I fear unlikely to become a mainstream reality until DNs are designing and implementing the courses themselves.
In the terms of Oblinger's article 'Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millenials', I would class myself as being a Gen-Xer, being really the first generation to have computers in schools and games consoles at home. This puts me in a good position to notice the difference between my parents' generation, the Baby Boomers, and the younger Millenials. The world of the Millenials, in terms of their immersion in digital technologies, compared to my own and especially the Boomer's childhood is striking: a single mobile phone can nowadays play music, games and videos, can take pictures and make films, can download information about latest news or sports events, can store data including contact details and diaries, can work as a GPS locator to help find directions, can be used as a calculator, can send SMS and get this... can even and phone someone anywhere in the world. Most kids nowadays will have all these functions at their fingertips, whereas a few generations ago, to have all these functions you would need a whole host of equipment, and pay a considerable amount for it. And this is just the phones - when you take into account the prevalence of cable TV, games consoles, internet and PCs, it is clear that for a young person nowadays, *digital is everywhere*. And yet mainstream education seems to almost ignore this reality completely.
The distinction between DNs and DIs is extremely useful in offering a explanation of these different paradigms, and why there might be tension between them. DNs think traditional teaching methods are boring and old-hat compared to the glut of cutting edge digital entertainment that they're used to; on the other hand DI teachers do not appreciate the value of digital material out there and accuse the young of being unco-operative or simply stupid when they get quickly tired of 'chalk-and-talk' teaching practices. On the whole, DI teachers make no effort to, or are simply unable to adapt teaching practices to get anywhere close to the kind of digital environment that DNs are used to. Having spent the last two years working in secondary schools myself, I have heard many staffroom conversations centred around how 'kids of today are different', 'they were never this bad!'; and while it might be argued that teachers have always complained that 'kids weren't like this in my day', even teachers who have taught for generations will maintain that the current generation is *significantly* different. This disparity is leading to a number of problems in education: teachers are becoming demoralised, students are disengaged and worst of all, an entire generation is being ill-prepared for their post-school lives.
Perhaps the hardest lesson is that it is up to the DIs, not the DNs, to change. The DNs are growing up into a world where digital technologies will become more prevalent, becoming the dominant paradigm. To embrace this development, not only must current teaching practices change, but the teachers themselves must re-learn much of what they've been taught. This is likely to be a painful task. My own rather pessimistic view is that apart from a few early adopters, the education system will not fully 'go digital', until the current generation of DNs become teachers themselves. [Research into scientific paradigm changes by Thomas Kuhn ['The structure of scientific revolutions], points almost unanimously to the likelihood that proponents of an old paradigm will rarely change to embrace the new, but will challenge it to the end. A good example was Einstein, who was lampooned by Newtonians when he introduced his theories of relativity, then went on to lambast Nils Bohr and others who presented quantum mechanics.] Prensky's appeal that we need to 'invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us' is absolutely necessary if we are to do our students justice, but I fear unlikely to become a mainstream reality until DNs are designing and implementing the courses themselves.
Wednesday, 6 December 2006
Diminishing the digital divide - a need to bridge the generation gap?
Once again, fascinating issues raised by the core articles this week. Both highlight a significant difference in the generations, characterised by familiarity with computers, the internet and technology (or lack of it). This raises important issues for educators at ALL levels, in particular how these technologies can be put to best use in order to engage students without creating a 'digital dependence' where human relationships and overall learning might suffer.
Oblinger draws up 3 general but useful distinctions between generations and their understanding and comfort with ICTs (this includes internet use): Boomers, the 40+ age group, might be classed as 'digital migrants', or those who did not grow up surrounded by computers and associated technology, but had to learn about them at a later stage; Gen-Xers (which I fall into) who were the first generation to grow up with (albeit rudimentary) computers and who are the first 'digital natives'; and Millenials, or 'digital natives 2.0' who were born after 1982, and who are completely au fait with computers, internet and associated linking gadgets such as mobile phones, iPods etc. Millenials have also been classed as Generation-C - where C stands for Content - meaning that for this generation, creation of 'consumer generated content plays a significant role in their social life, generating streams of new text, images, audio and video on an ongoing basis. These characterisations are extremely useful for educators of the older generation who wish to better understand and inform the younger generations, and to an extent vice versa.
What is perhaps most interesting for teachers at all levels is that Millenials exhibit distinct learning styles, as Clare Raines suggests in 'Managing Millenials'. Their learning preferences embrace "teamwork, technology, structure, entertainment & excitement [and] experiential activities". These preferences may be said to differ significantly to those of the Boomer generation when they were at school. And this is the challenge faced by the Boomer generation, who are currently in management positions in schools, colleges and universities: how can they tailor way that teaching and learning is presented to engage the students of the tech-generations? If they do not, there is a danger of disenfranchising large numbers of young people, perhaps even turning them off from education completely.
Teachers at all levels must therefore increasingly adopt methods that appeal to what might be termed the "information-age mind-set." As Oblinger writes, 'the attitudes - and aptitudes - of students who have grown up with technology appear to be differ from those of students who rarely use technology." She cites Jason Frand, who lists ten key attributes of this emerging mind-set: "[1] Computers aren't technology; [2] Internet is better than TV; [3] Reality is no longer real (re: potential inaccuracies of digital content); [4] Doing is more important than knowing; [5] Learning more closely resembles Nintendo than logic; [6] Multi-tasking is a way of life; [7] Typing is preferred to handwriting; [8] Staying connected is essential; [9] Zero tolerance of delays; and [10] Consumer and creator are blurring." These all combine to highlight fairly significant changes in how young people process information.
In the other core article, Monereo highlights this cognitive change. "Just as steps from oral culture to written culture and then from writing into printing had clear repercussions for forms of learning and thinking, the transition from the printed culture to this new digital culture will have diverse consequences for our cognition". In particular, point [4] above marks a giant step, where knowledge accumulation needs no longer be a principle goal of education, as information can be easily accessed and needn't necessarily be stored in an individual's brain. Monereo again, describes this distinction, writing that "technological migrants [Boomers] regard knowledge as something that they possess, something that they carry around with them; technological natives [Gen-X onwards] see it as something that they obtain through a set of applications and instruments. This distinction modifies substantially notions such as intelligence, wisdom and ability." This change also has significant epistemological ramifications.
Once again Monereo raises this issue. "For the older generation there have always been universal truths, both scientific and moral... But for the younger generation, "everything depends"; all truths are relative nd depend on who, when, how, and why they are stated; they are never independent of their utterer or their context." This is a considerable, and I think exciting, philosophical change that teachers must accommodate - teaching that knowledge is absolute will not convince our young learners; they will require to be told of the bigger picture, and then make their own minds up. [See the excellent example, again cited by Oblinger, which provides students with a broad range of documents relating to the civil war, encouraging them to view sources as a multitude of opinions, not facts, and to synthesize a broad range data to form opinions of their own.]
I also feel, although to a lesser extent than above, point [5] also presents and interesting challenge to teachers - to engage students in ways that complex problem-solving computer games, with high levels of interactivity might. Recognising and accomodating these changes will I think prove to be an important challenge for teachers over the coming years, moving away from linear, textbook-based learning, to classes that, in Oblinger's words, 'give way to simulations, games and collaboration'.
With respect to my previous posting, in which I suggested that online learning was not well suited to learning environments in which f2f social interaction played a key role in learning outcomes, I'd like to reconsider my position. On the one hand, online and distance education may not be suited for younger learners (say up to 24), but on the other hand, if these internet related functions are playing such a significant role in young peoples lives (as Oblinger et al suggest), teachers should really adapt practices to accommodate these changes and preferences. This might be done in traditional classroom settings, with homework involving internet-based projects. And statistics of web use among young people (at least in USA) would support this: 94% of school age pupils use the internet for school research and 78% believe the internet helps with schoolwork [quoted by Oblinger]. From my own personal experience, having delivered many courses on learning styles and methods with S1 pupils, in a list of differing methods of learning: from reading books, group work, experiments, projects, TV, internet, watchin a teacher, listening to the teacher, looking at pictures, listening to CDs, library, etc., the 3 most popular choices every time are TV, CDs and the Internet. While these obviously form the most common channels for entertainment, and are therefore likely to be regularly used by kids, teachers must recognise these preferences if they are to fully engage students. Linking back to a previous posting, they must understand and make use of the media with which their students are most at home.
But the concern from the parental generation is that pupils' overall welfare may suffer as a result of, amongst other things, over-immersement in technology. There is much debate on so-called toxic culture, spear-headed by Sue Palmer's book 'Toxic Childhood' which raises cautionary concerns about causes of children's angst and disillusionment. This prompted the signing of a letter from 110 child experts and authors which was sent to the Daily Telegraph (article), detailing how 'a sinister cocktail of junk food, marketing, over-competitive schooling and electronic entertainment is poisoning childhood'. While there are obviously many contributing factors to this apparent malaise amongst the young, over-use of technology is often cited as one of them. Spending a great deal of time in schools, I often see rows of friends playing hand-held computer games or with their mobile phones, instead of interacting in other ways. This over-immersement is surely damaging to their ability to communicate and empathise with others.
Monereo also devotes a section to his paper on the psychosocial risks of exposing students to ICTs. He cites our old friend Dreyfus's key concerns about epistemological relativism, the limiting of interpersonal skills, and how 'the vulnerability of the self, the need to take precautions, the need to show respect for, and commitment, to others, the responsibility for one's own actions and the ability to distinguish between what is fundamental and requires effort and what is trivial and can be ignored - break down and vanish'. As I have argued in a previous posting, while I share many of Dreyfus's concerns, they present a double-edged sword in that these concerns may also be experienced as benefits to some.
Monereo also adds other concerns about over-use of ICTs taken from research and reflection in the socio-educational setting, namely: "the curse of excess" [Alfons Cornella] relating to an over saturation of information; 'infoxication', or the 'difficulty... of extablishing credibility... of a certain piece of information; informalisation of education; and what he calls 'educational infomercantilism', where packaged educational courses become a kind of 'data fast food' which is not taken seriously. All of these are valid points, but I feel they shouldn't necessarily warn us away from ICT usage completely, but rather should highlight potential implications of sustained ICT use, and how any negative consequences might be recognised and avoided. [See Adbuster's Media Empowerment Kit as a potential tool for improving children's understanding that information is not always as it seems].
The unavoidable reality is that such technology exists, and is popular among the young. Older generations may gripe and groan, but are also likely to be spending a large amount of time in front of a computer themselves. And it's not as if those who grew up post-war were growing up in an age of enlightenment. There was poverty, hardship and other perhaps more severe concerns for children of that day. [See Catherine Bennett's response to toxic culture concerns]. And there are also arguments that internet and technology use actually *improves* relationships with others. Stats cited by Oblinger show that 60% of college students believe the internet has improved their relationships with classmates, 56% believe it has improved their relationships with professors. Likewise an enormous number of school-age children are well-versed in social-networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo and chat systems such as MSN - this points to a large capacity for communication. Evidence from developing countries also points to mobile phone and internet use helping to bring communities together [see work of Daniel Miller].
In conclusion, much of the same priorities arise to those stated in previous postings. As Monereo writes, we must 'explore the relative merits of face-to-face and virtual teaching environments and to determine contexts inwhich one is preferred to the other.' We must work on a pragmatic analysis of opportunities that ICTs and internet use might bring, and weigh these up against some of the potential downsides. We must be prepared to let go of out-dated teaching methods and develop new ones if need be. And we must, in Monereo's words, '[promote] the acquisition of a set of essential skills for surviving [and I might add, *flourishing*] in the Information Society'. Carrying out these suggestions will be vital if we are to engage the learners of tommorrow, while helping to safeguard students' overall psycho-social wellbeing.
Oblinger draws up 3 general but useful distinctions between generations and their understanding and comfort with ICTs (this includes internet use): Boomers, the 40+ age group, might be classed as 'digital migrants', or those who did not grow up surrounded by computers and associated technology, but had to learn about them at a later stage; Gen-Xers (which I fall into) who were the first generation to grow up with (albeit rudimentary) computers and who are the first 'digital natives'; and Millenials, or 'digital natives 2.0' who were born after 1982, and who are completely au fait with computers, internet and associated linking gadgets such as mobile phones, iPods etc. Millenials have also been classed as Generation-C - where C stands for Content - meaning that for this generation, creation of 'consumer generated content plays a significant role in their social life, generating streams of new text, images, audio and video on an ongoing basis. These characterisations are extremely useful for educators of the older generation who wish to better understand and inform the younger generations, and to an extent vice versa.
What is perhaps most interesting for teachers at all levels is that Millenials exhibit distinct learning styles, as Clare Raines suggests in 'Managing Millenials'. Their learning preferences embrace "teamwork, technology, structure, entertainment & excitement [and] experiential activities". These preferences may be said to differ significantly to those of the Boomer generation when they were at school. And this is the challenge faced by the Boomer generation, who are currently in management positions in schools, colleges and universities: how can they tailor way that teaching and learning is presented to engage the students of the tech-generations? If they do not, there is a danger of disenfranchising large numbers of young people, perhaps even turning them off from education completely.
Teachers at all levels must therefore increasingly adopt methods that appeal to what might be termed the "information-age mind-set." As Oblinger writes, 'the attitudes - and aptitudes - of students who have grown up with technology appear to be differ from those of students who rarely use technology." She cites Jason Frand, who lists ten key attributes of this emerging mind-set: "[1] Computers aren't technology; [2] Internet is better than TV; [3] Reality is no longer real (re: potential inaccuracies of digital content); [4] Doing is more important than knowing; [5] Learning more closely resembles Nintendo than logic; [6] Multi-tasking is a way of life; [7] Typing is preferred to handwriting; [8] Staying connected is essential; [9] Zero tolerance of delays; and [10] Consumer and creator are blurring." These all combine to highlight fairly significant changes in how young people process information.
In the other core article, Monereo highlights this cognitive change. "Just as steps from oral culture to written culture and then from writing into printing had clear repercussions for forms of learning and thinking, the transition from the printed culture to this new digital culture will have diverse consequences for our cognition". In particular, point [4] above marks a giant step, where knowledge accumulation needs no longer be a principle goal of education, as information can be easily accessed and needn't necessarily be stored in an individual's brain. Monereo again, describes this distinction, writing that "technological migrants [Boomers] regard knowledge as something that they possess, something that they carry around with them; technological natives [Gen-X onwards] see it as something that they obtain through a set of applications and instruments. This distinction modifies substantially notions such as intelligence, wisdom and ability." This change also has significant epistemological ramifications.
Once again Monereo raises this issue. "For the older generation there have always been universal truths, both scientific and moral... But for the younger generation, "everything depends"; all truths are relative nd depend on who, when, how, and why they are stated; they are never independent of their utterer or their context." This is a considerable, and I think exciting, philosophical change that teachers must accommodate - teaching that knowledge is absolute will not convince our young learners; they will require to be told of the bigger picture, and then make their own minds up. [See the excellent example, again cited by Oblinger, which provides students with a broad range of documents relating to the civil war, encouraging them to view sources as a multitude of opinions, not facts, and to synthesize a broad range data to form opinions of their own.]
I also feel, although to a lesser extent than above, point [5] also presents and interesting challenge to teachers - to engage students in ways that complex problem-solving computer games, with high levels of interactivity might. Recognising and accomodating these changes will I think prove to be an important challenge for teachers over the coming years, moving away from linear, textbook-based learning, to classes that, in Oblinger's words, 'give way to simulations, games and collaboration'.
With respect to my previous posting, in which I suggested that online learning was not well suited to learning environments in which f2f social interaction played a key role in learning outcomes, I'd like to reconsider my position. On the one hand, online and distance education may not be suited for younger learners (say up to 24), but on the other hand, if these internet related functions are playing such a significant role in young peoples lives (as Oblinger et al suggest), teachers should really adapt practices to accommodate these changes and preferences. This might be done in traditional classroom settings, with homework involving internet-based projects. And statistics of web use among young people (at least in USA) would support this: 94% of school age pupils use the internet for school research and 78% believe the internet helps with schoolwork [quoted by Oblinger]. From my own personal experience, having delivered many courses on learning styles and methods with S1 pupils, in a list of differing methods of learning: from reading books, group work, experiments, projects, TV, internet, watchin a teacher, listening to the teacher, looking at pictures, listening to CDs, library, etc., the 3 most popular choices every time are TV, CDs and the Internet. While these obviously form the most common channels for entertainment, and are therefore likely to be regularly used by kids, teachers must recognise these preferences if they are to fully engage students. Linking back to a previous posting, they must understand and make use of the media with which their students are most at home.
But the concern from the parental generation is that pupils' overall welfare may suffer as a result of, amongst other things, over-immersement in technology. There is much debate on so-called toxic culture, spear-headed by Sue Palmer's book 'Toxic Childhood' which raises cautionary concerns about causes of children's angst and disillusionment. This prompted the signing of a letter from 110 child experts and authors which was sent to the Daily Telegraph (article), detailing how 'a sinister cocktail of junk food, marketing, over-competitive schooling and electronic entertainment is poisoning childhood'. While there are obviously many contributing factors to this apparent malaise amongst the young, over-use of technology is often cited as one of them. Spending a great deal of time in schools, I often see rows of friends playing hand-held computer games or with their mobile phones, instead of interacting in other ways. This over-immersement is surely damaging to their ability to communicate and empathise with others.
Monereo also devotes a section to his paper on the psychosocial risks of exposing students to ICTs. He cites our old friend Dreyfus's key concerns about epistemological relativism, the limiting of interpersonal skills, and how 'the vulnerability of the self, the need to take precautions, the need to show respect for, and commitment, to others, the responsibility for one's own actions and the ability to distinguish between what is fundamental and requires effort and what is trivial and can be ignored - break down and vanish'. As I have argued in a previous posting, while I share many of Dreyfus's concerns, they present a double-edged sword in that these concerns may also be experienced as benefits to some.
Monereo also adds other concerns about over-use of ICTs taken from research and reflection in the socio-educational setting, namely: "the curse of excess" [Alfons Cornella] relating to an over saturation of information; 'infoxication', or the 'difficulty... of extablishing credibility... of a certain piece of information; informalisation of education; and what he calls 'educational infomercantilism', where packaged educational courses become a kind of 'data fast food' which is not taken seriously. All of these are valid points, but I feel they shouldn't necessarily warn us away from ICT usage completely, but rather should highlight potential implications of sustained ICT use, and how any negative consequences might be recognised and avoided. [See Adbuster's Media Empowerment Kit as a potential tool for improving children's understanding that information is not always as it seems].
The unavoidable reality is that such technology exists, and is popular among the young. Older generations may gripe and groan, but are also likely to be spending a large amount of time in front of a computer themselves. And it's not as if those who grew up post-war were growing up in an age of enlightenment. There was poverty, hardship and other perhaps more severe concerns for children of that day. [See Catherine Bennett's response to toxic culture concerns]. And there are also arguments that internet and technology use actually *improves* relationships with others. Stats cited by Oblinger show that 60% of college students believe the internet has improved their relationships with classmates, 56% believe it has improved their relationships with professors. Likewise an enormous number of school-age children are well-versed in social-networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo and chat systems such as MSN - this points to a large capacity for communication. Evidence from developing countries also points to mobile phone and internet use helping to bring communities together [see work of Daniel Miller].
In conclusion, much of the same priorities arise to those stated in previous postings. As Monereo writes, we must 'explore the relative merits of face-to-face and virtual teaching environments and to determine contexts inwhich one is preferred to the other.' We must work on a pragmatic analysis of opportunities that ICTs and internet use might bring, and weigh these up against some of the potential downsides. We must be prepared to let go of out-dated teaching methods and develop new ones if need be. And we must, in Monereo's words, '[promote] the acquisition of a set of essential skills for surviving [and I might add, *flourishing*] in the Information Society'. Carrying out these suggestions will be vital if we are to engage the learners of tommorrow, while helping to safeguard students' overall psycho-social wellbeing.
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