Digital natives and digital immigrants RSS
Reflections on the native/immigrant debate
Reflections
Last updated 9 February 2010 at 10:17
As I read about the natives/immigrants debate, and as I listen to and watch relevant podcasts (including a couple of superb programmes by Stephen Fry) I have to keep looking at the date of each article/broadcast and modify the level of authority I attach to it (and my reaction to it) accordingly; analyses published in 2008 of surveys conducted in 2006 of student technology access and preferences seem terribly dated in these days of affordable netbooks, smart phones, iPads, ubiquitous 3G and wireless networking. I work in a university IT department and see at first hand what students have access to. I wander through the library and see how they work. I also know that my own behaviour and that of colleagues is changing - I listen to much material online; I read on screen; I network online; I blog and chat. My view is that in reality there is no avoiding the imperative to adapt teaching approaches to accommodate the needs and preferences of the spectrum of digital natives, and to seek ways effectively to exploit the potential of technology, and support students in developing missing information literacies - to enhance their 'digital wisdom'.
Multitasking - or multislacking?
The common assertion that the net generation are adept at multitasking was challenged in the Analysis programme by Martin Westwell - another neurologist - who pointed out that in fact it is not until our early 20s that our brains are ready for effective multitasking. Although teenagers will claim that they can remain focused despite distractions, the reality is that their performance on the primary task will be impaired. David Nicholas had referred to multitasking as multlislacking; the distractions of MSN etc meant that, on average, less than one minute is spent on average on any website, and long articles are simply not read. He likened 'power browsing' to channel surfing on TV - looking at everything without any depth.
The wisdom of the immigrant
Last updated 27 June 2010 at 22:51
Returning to the editon of Analysis, I was more persuaded by Brabazon's assertion, which is backed up by Woolf, that the online world has caused us all to browse shallowly rather than drill deep; that everyone is skim reading and that universities need genuinely to challenge students. This line of argument was articulated persuasively by David Nicholas who argued that whilst digital natives certainly are at home with technology, they lack the evaluative framework of previous generations. They don't have the necessary capacity for evaluation of resources and don't appreciate the importance of authenticity or authority, and so are unable to exploit and filter the wealth of information available to them online. Nicholas argues that the digital immigrants are far better able to appreciate the new information economy because they understand the importance of the literature and of scolarly librarianship - they are empowered by it whereas the Google generation are less equipped to exploit it. This is what Prensky describes in 2009 as 'digital wisdom'; but Prensky's thesis is that no amount of wisdom will compensate for digital illiteracy in the present day and future. I am persuaded by his argument that whilst 'the need for wise people to discuss, define, compare and evaluate perspectives is not changing, the means by which they do so...are growing more sophisticated because of digital technology'. He looks beyond the types of digital information literacies considered by Nicholas and Brabazon to argue the wider utility of digital tools for simulation, modelling, scenario building, data analysis and decision making render it difficult or impossible for the unaided human brain to compete.
Clever.com
By chance, one of the podcasts we had lined up to listen to on our holiday this week was an edition of Analysis (radio 4) broadcast on 12 March 2009 called 'Clever.com' - all about the emerging digital natives debate. It featured Tara Brabazon - arch critic of the student-centred learning movement, David Nicholas from the UCL's Information Studies department, and Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics and advocate of the need for a new approach to education for the net generation.
Tapscott referred to the broadcast learning model of teaching, with its emphasis on memory, practice and repetition,as 'drill and kill' and argued, as Prensky (2001) did that students' brains are now wired differently from those of previous generations. Marianne Wolff (Woolf?), a neurologist, supported this argument pointing out that human brains were never desgined for reading, rather for the oral tradition of learning by storytelling and recounting of experiences (and of course seeing, hearing and feeling). Apart from our DNA, Woolf explained that the major factor affecting the development Our brains are our experiences in adolescence; apparently habitual, fluent readers' brains are observably different from those of novice readers as neurons are rearranged as we develop reading skills. So it is unsuprising if the current generation of students who have been brought up as heavy users of computers have different brains than their parents. Tapscott argued that the time that the net generation spend online is being spent more productively than the time spent by their parents watching TV (24 hours per week! horrifying but, thinking back to my teens, probably accurate). He pointed out that their online activities include useful activities such as reading, thinking, collaborating, composing, organising, scrutinising, and authenticating - unlike their parents who were passive receivers of broadcasts. He suggested that students today were better equipped than the previous generation for creative thinking, communication and problem-solving.
However Woolf expressed concern that the level of analysis and depth of reading was inferior for the digital native generation. These concerns were supported by Brabazon who is critical of the move towards student-centred learning; she argued that students tend to centre their learning on their own culture whereas they ought to be exposed to different cultures. She also argued student-centred learning 'denies what the teacher does'. I would argue that teachers have a pivotal role in supporting student-centred learning - they need to provide a framework and guidance for students but they can and should allow students to discover and create their own knowledge; the teacher's role is essential, but should not be that of presenter of facts and tester of knowledge. The critique of the binary native:immigant divide by Bayne and Ross (2009 in press) is more measured and cautions against the tendency to oversimplify the debate and to 'over-determine our future relationships between teacher, learner, technology and higher education.'
Michael Wesch - a vision of students today
Apple HE Leaders Day RSS
Posts from a couple of Apple conferences
Bite of the Apple
Had an interesting day at the rather grandly titled Apple EU Leadership Summit. It’s organised by Apple for an audience of European HE ‘thought leaders’ (now there’s a wonderful title) and timed to precede the BETT exhibition of educational technologies – this timing meant that it was very well attended by people from outside the UK. We were all given an iPad for the day, loaded with educational apps (many aimed at pre-schoolers so very interesting for me as mum to a 3 year old!)
In the first session we heard from various senior Apple people about how uptake of their products by students and institutions is growing – especially in the US (at Duke University 92% of students own – or plan to buy – an Apple laptop). We saw how adoption rates for new technologies are soaring – it took just 9 months to sell 10 million iPads, compared with 19 years for the colour TV. Not surprisingly there was much focus on the wonders of the iPad and its educational apps.
We heard from Theodore Gray from Wolfram – creators of Mathematica, of the superb WolframAlpha ‘computational knowledge engine’), and subsequently of the wonderful Elements iPad app, and the soon-to-be-launched Solar System app (shameless plug – many of the graphics were created by my good friends from Planetary Visions (a company originating from UCL). I had a weird and utterly distracting experience in this session as the chap sitting next to me (Neil Powell) was sketching the speaker on his iPad using the Sketchbook app!
Martin Bean – VC of the OU – made us all laugh by referring to the deployment across the auditorium of ‘weapons of mass distraction’; I had been switching between the summit agenda/networking app, Twitter, email, playing with the apps on the iPad, and trying to take meaningful notes – multitasking on a truly stupid scale. Bean was great, as always, showing some wonderful examples of the OU’s online courses. He talked of the challenge that we all seem to think of as new since the ‘information age’ of transforming information into meaningful knowledge, and pointed out that twas always thus, quoting from Vannevar Bush in 1945 and Denis Diderot in 1755. Information overload was also a theme for Bill Rankin’s (Abilene Christian University) closing keynote – he pointed out that as educators we no longer need to deliver information; rather we – and our students – need to be able to assess information. Information is becoming out of date or even obsolete rapidly; it is the models and techniques for managing and assessing it which remain valid and essential.
The day also included a hands-on workshop exploring new iPad apps. Fun, but made me fret about the need for cross platform tools. We are a long way from a time when all students will have an iPad – or indeed any kind of smart tablet device. So, no matter how great these apps are for learning they don’t represent a realistic opportunity for our students unless departments invest in large scale purchase (which seems unlikely in the current financial climate). And even if UCL could afford to equip students in this way, some students may not want to use products from one particular vendor, especially if they don’t easily work with their existing tools of choice. Even though I am an enthusiastic Apple user both at home and work, I consciously choose cloud-based tools like Evernote and Dropbox which work on all platforms where possible (for instance, much as I’d love to use Keynote for presentations I have to be able to share with colleagues who are PC users.)
Ah well, a good day overall, and found lots of great new apps for my 3 year old daughter!
"How the iPhone could unmake (and save) the university" (Bill Rankin)
Last updated 9 February 2010 at 8:50
Bill Rankin's presentation to the Apple HE Leaders' day on 14th Jan 2010 was an entrancing romp through the history of media and learning, starting in the 3rd century. Rankin is an associate professor of medieval literature from Abilene Christian University (ACU) in Texas and delivered one of the most enjoyable and thought provoking talks I've seen for a long time.
He started by reminding us of an early technology shift in the third century from a linear, and not terribly portable nor accessible form of information storage (the scroll) to a random access and portable format (the codex - an early form of book) and outlined the classic cycle of technology change from (1) innovation (a technology solves a problem), (2) building (new cultures form around it), (3) solidification (new problems are identifed) to (4) destabilisation.
He took us through the evolution of learning and information transfer, starting in the middle ages when work of mouth and apprenticeship were the main forms of learning. People learned by watching experts - in a real life context - and developed their skills by taking on simple tasks, practicing over and over until they were ready to try a more difficult task. Learning was embodied, subjective, dialectic and broadly interconnected (we'll return to this later). The challenge was access - to the master, and to texts.
The invention of the printing press in the 15th century solved the access problem, as multiple copies could be made. However it introduced the problem of information retrieval, and the need for cataloguing. Rankin entertained the audience with an image of a large set of card indexes in a library - reminding us how many hours we'd had to spend as students seeking out information by hand. The teacher took on the role of conduit - helping to organise and synthesise information - and the student became a passive receiver. Learning became hierarchical, objective (from a book rather than from a person), standardized (same learning expereince for everyone), narrowly defined. There was a lack of analysis and a focus on learning facts, on data, and on repetition.
Moving into the digital age the greatest challenge is one of information finding. Rankin Googled 'educational technology' and retrieved 51 million hits in 30 seconds. He pointed out that, at 5 seconds each, it would take over 70 years (i.e. a lifetime) to look at each one. He made us laugh in painful recognition that, being of a certain age, most of us in the audience persist in trying to file emails into folders, only resorting to searching when we find we've misfiled a message. In contrast the digital native generation don't see the point of folders and just search for what they want. (My personal resolution is to start to demolish my folders and salvage some valuable lost hours.)
Now we are in an era when classes are still places of standardisation - one syllabus and approach for all. He referred us to Michael Weschs's video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o) about digital natives and what they really do in class (facebook, email, text, chat, generally multitask). Rankin argued that technoligies offer a way out of standardisation, referring to Marshall McLuhan's view that technologies are extensions of the self, extending our identities.
McLuhan referred to the 'tetrad of media effects' which looks at the effects that a medium has on society, dividing them into four categories: Enhancement (what the medium improves), Retrieval (what the medium recovers whcih had previously been lost), Obsolescence (or reduction in prominence) and Reversal (what happens ultimately).
Rankin applied the media tetrad to Information retrieval using converged mobile media devices (such as iPhones) and showed how context is enhanced; situational mreaning may be retrieved; centralisation my be made obsolescent (why have physical classes or libraries if people can learn where they want to be); the reversal is intrusion of technologies into our lives which is beginnning to be a problem for some.
Applied to communications the tetrad for converged mobile media devices enhances multivocality; retrieves communities; makes uniformity obsolete; with cacophony being the reversal.
Applied to mobility the tetrad for converged mobile media devices enhances personalization; retrieves wholeness or synthesis; makes categorization (e.g. folders!) obsolete; with isolation being the reversal.
Rankin's argument in favour of the use of moibile devices in learning is that they can help:
- Teaching become relational once again (e.g. blogs, chat, twitter, email and other front and back channel communications.)
- Teachers can once again serve as mentors, guiding students through their own discovery of information rather than presenting information.
- Emphasize contextual learning, using knowledge in particular contexts. Whereas clases used to be used to present information but without time to apply it, that information can be given in advance (homework) by podcast, say, and then students can use the class time to apply that knowledge.
- Allow more challenge-based learning and field exploration of real world contexts.
So learning becomes embodied, subjective, dialectic and broadly interconnected - as it was in the middle ages - with new media publishing, personal learning networks and individualised learning, all available from a mobile device. Students can reasonably asked to use their devices to discover content for themselves in class; it becomes their content and so has more meaning and value for them. Getting students to publish their work to the world is a strong motivator for a good job as the prospect of real world exposure raises the standard. This is where the unmaking of 500 years of university tradition has to begin.
Rankin finished with an open invitation to join CIRCL - the Consortium for Innovation and Research in Converged Learning (http://www.opencircl.org). Also see http://www.acu.edu/connected
[There was a question about approaches to assessment if we are to abandon standards; Rankin suggested that there is a need for individualised assessment which recognises variations in prior learning and tailors goals to the individual. He argued that students are more likely to reach their potential if given realistic challenges. he told how he has given students opportunities to re-submit the same piece of work, following his feedback on drafts, as many times as they wish until they are happy with their final version which is then submitted for marking.]