Learning in the New Digital Landscape (Windows on the Future)
Ian Jukes at NECC 2003 (with Ted McCain)

30 June 2003

All images shown prior to workshop are on Ian's website, www.ianjukes.com

No PPT for Ian with text: all photos of kids

43 page handout is available on Ian's website
http://www.thecommittedsardine.net/infosavvy/education/handouts/it.pdf

Want to talk about learning and the new digital landscape, about halfway thru want to intro you to research about how kids learn, process info, etc

Kids are kids, they may look different, sound different, act different: but they are same kids, have same issues, same immaturity --- NO THEY ARE NOT, THEY ARE DIFFERENT

Not just in their clothes, way they talk,

• brain research tells us that kids today are fundamentally different in they way the think, obtain process info, communicate in the modern world
• This holds profound implications for each one of us
• Today we want to examine why this is happening, and what this means for education

Photo of Cleavers and Happy Days

Most of us grew up in relatively stable conditions

• At that point life was predictable
• There was an amazing rhythm to the pace of life: PREDICTABLE
• Change was something that happened, but change happened slowly
• Lives were simpler back then (they really were) - we played with friends outside, in the backyard, in the park till it got dark, rode in cars without seatbelts
• There was a sense of community, everyone knew everyone in the community and looked out for each other
• In the backyard, neighborhood, we worked in groups, planned, imagined, formed teams, this all happened face to face

Our world was decidedly low tech, etchesketch, slinkies-- we had 1 TV in the living room, we saw it together and discussed it, had to go to the movies

In those days imagination was absolutely essential, sticks became swords, rocks became horses, because our lives were so low tech one of the worst things that could happen to you when you was a kid was to be sent to your room (then there was nothing to do)

Letters took days to receive, even longer for responses, some grew up with party line phones, long distance calls were expensives

HAD TO LEARN TO WAIT AND BE PATIENT

Very limited access to info, thru the radio, info was finite because we lived in largely a single source world

Film, slides, etc were multimedia

Who remembers waiting for a Mickey Mouse membership?

Research was a physical act: went through the 'stacks' - info didn't change that quickly

• Schools: safe, orderly, had authority, teachers were respected, some got the strap the cane the ruler, most parents supported the actions of the schools
• we sat in rows, sometimes alphabetically so the teacher didn't need to know our names
• primary focus on content recall, as we progressed thru the system teachers become specialists
• most powerful technology in the classroom was a piece of chalk and a piece of slate

THAT WAS THEN, now juxtapopse with now (Beavis and his friend, The Osbournes)

Much fewer families let by 2 parents, now blended families.... rhythm of life is as much dictated by work schedules as the needs of the family

much harder to keep

fast food mentality,

68% of American homes the only parent or both parents work in order to make ends meet

parents spend 40% less time with their children than they did 30 years ago, most of that time is spent with

TIME is not the resource shortage in families, it is ATTENTION

• Technology has begun to fill the void, email, surfing, cell phones, video games
• 64% of kids in America come home to no one (parent(s) are at work)
• Kids are left to their own devices
• Instead of playing outside, kids listen to music, watch movies, surf the web, etc-- technology gadgets have become electronic babysitters
• Increasingly this is where kids build their relationships and find their role models
• Most kids today are completely confortable existing in their digital cacoons

This has hand a PROFOUND affect on our children

Richard Saul Wurman: INFORMATIONANXIETY2 (book to read)

• 82% of American children play video games regularly, most money spent by kids on toys is spent on electronics
• these tools and toys would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago
• These kids have internalized digital media (operate at 'twitch' speed)
• will have instant access to goods and services
• This has lead to a phenomenon called the death of patience: a society looking for instant gratification

Expectation shift is a big result of moving services to the web, kids have such access to services, cheat sheets, online clubs, each other via IM

MTV mindset: grown up in text based world and world replate with images and sounds, presented as a single entity

• David Thornburg: Not multimedia, it is monomedia (all zeros and ones, but put all together)
• Provide experiences that have more impact on them than reading an entire book
• Not just passive viewing, kids expect and need to be involved, interactive
• relevant real life experiences

Doesn't just apply to those who have access to the latest tools, applies to both side of the digital divide, not just unique to North American kids

Kids are FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT today (digital natives) - it is basic nature to multitask, hyperlinks, etc

maintaining all these simultaneous

Kids becoming increasingly immersed in the new digital landscape

• Kids from 60s and 70s would find this era a dizzying confusing place to be
• Kids use these digital tools transparently without mareveling at them
• These kids have a native language, are digitally fluent, (MARK PRENSKI says "digital natives")
• We face a second digital divide, not just haves and have nots
• ones caused by fundamental differences in the way we grew up

our generation come from a different land and time

We speak and hear digital without a digital accent, we want to talk face to face like we used to do in the park

Use of these tools does not

We are DSL (digital as a second language)

some of us are better at adapting to the new country, but we all struggle to adapt, new ways of communicating, interfacing

THE THICKER THE ACCENT, the harder it is to understand or be understood by the digital natives

You are a digital immigrant

• print email or a webpage
• call someone with a great website you've used
• talk about dialing a phone number

Natural for digital immigrants: rapid fire trial and error learning (ME: This is my life as a functional fireman)

By the time we have read the TOC of a manual, the digital native has already found 10 things that work and 10 things that don't

Kids can see the entire world as one big reset button, we try to apply and use the skills of the past age

Digital immigrants don't have problems with this because they are dumb/stupid:

• because there has been fundamental changes in how kids perceive, process, and share info
• their focus is different

we tend now to complain about the skills kids don't have, and undervalue the skills that they DO have (look down on kids that are different than us)

Spend a lot of time talking about how much better it "was" in the old world

Because of the pervasive nature of the digital culture:

• brains of the digital generation continue to change physically and chemically, WE CANNOT IGNORE this overwhelming evidence as educators
• kids are fundamentally different in the ways they access, absorbe, process, and use info

Conventional science believed

• by age 3 kids had a fixed number of neurons
• held that we all thought in the same way, used the same neural pathways

Neuroplasticity- now we know the brain is constantly reorganizing itself based on inputs, it restructures neurla pathways based on input

• brains don't just chang on their own, require sustained stimulation and focus over a long period of time (several hours a day, 7 days a week)
• TV has reprogrammed our brains in this way

1974 we got Pong, then Super Pong

These experiences are literally reprogramming kids brains so we process info differently

• Cognomics: new field of science, 3D scanners to digital in 3D analyze brain's function
• we have learned more in 3 years than we did in the past 100 years about brain function
• these show kids use different neural pathways to process the same info differently, this helps explain why kids view the world the way they do and act the way they do
• almost none of what we have learned about brain functioning in the past 3 years is being applied in education today

It has long been known lecture is the poorest way to get people to learn

• I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand
• David Sousa " How the Brain Learns"
• if no connection between what is in short term memory and your long term memory in 24 hours, you don't keep it
• like velcro learning, you don't have both
• Bethel and Main: Learning Pyramid (NSA Wings Personal Learning System) THIS IS EXACTLY THE SLIDE I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR FOR MY OWN PPTs

Emphasis can't be on data recall

When you find yourself flogging a dead horse, it is best to dismount

HOTS: Higher Order Thinking Skills

Bloom's Taxonimy-- must focus on these higher levels, critical thinking and problem solving

Do schools today reflect the reality of the world today or reflect us, our past, our values, our perspectives, comfort zones, etc

Do instructional practices today align with the reseach, or is their fundamental dissonance between what is and what was, and what should be

Most of our schools: it is just like 50 years ago, the oral tradition continues, esp as kids "move through the system"

As kids move up elementary grades, discovery learning goes out the door, method is primarily chalk and talk

Who is in control of education? We are! But we come from a land and time far away from today.

• Educational institutions modeled a non-digital method of teaching and learning
• this is why many of our current student teachers are more traditional than we are (we teach as we are taught)

Methodologies today generally the same as they were 50 years ago

• content without conflict
• low level content recall
• standards and high stakes testing reinforce this focus

some teachers are real pleased at this, they get to thinking they (teachers) don't need to change, kids need to change

Eric Hoffer quote

ARE WE THE LEARNERS OR THE LEARNED

Do we want our kids to inherit the world?

• good at school but unprepared for life
• No child left untested (NCLB)

How can we truly leave no child behind

We can't fixate on the past or dream about utopia / vision that cannot be

We must adapt and address issues of standards and accountability on one time, and acknowledge the needs and nature of our kids today

Digital learners prefer (while teachers prefer the opposite)

• prefer to recieve info quickly from multiple multimedia sources
• parallel processing and multitasking
• processing pictures, sounds, and video before text
• random access to hyperlinked mm info
• interact/network simultaneously with many others
• learn just in time, just as I need to learn it (many teachers teach "just in case")
• instant gratification and instant rewards
• learning that is relevant, instantly useful and fun

this is a REAL digital divide

Teachers must learn to communiate in the native language and style of their students

• We must embrace new instructional methodologies
• This doesn't mean changing what is important
• changing our approach, less step by step, random access, just in time, multimeida, interactivity
• apply what we know from brain research to our teaching

2 types of content we must teach:

• logical thinking, the traditional content areas, reading, writing, etc: most just as important as ever
• 21st Century content, critical thinking, process skills, personal life skills, goal setting, tech fluency, visual fluence, biotech and bioethic skills

If want want our students to have relevant

MUST CREATE A BRIDGE between their world and ours

Schools must make it happen for millionns

Educators must stand in the gap between the present and the future

It is our creativity and passion that builds these bridges

YOU ARE America's greatest hope and Americas most important professionals

Einstein's focus on

Ian: He is frightened at the pace of change, the window is closing on using technology to change fundamentally what

closing quote: by Dan Quayle....

If you fish for a person, they will fish for a day. If you teach a person to fish, they will be a fish forever.

Back to Wesley's NECC 2003 Notes