– live blogging –
Teaching in the New Digital landscape
Ian Jukes
KIds are born into digital world…speak DFL (Digital First Language)…adults speak DSL (Digital second language)…we come from another country …like all immigrants we retain some of the old country traditions and understandings…
Kids have digital minds…we don’t yet fully understand complex processes…but our kids are different…
When we are born only 15% of brain wiring is in place…critical initial functions…old assumption is that by age of 3 we all had fixed intelligence and processing power…assumed to be the same for all brains…
But with major scientific breakthroughs and discoveries, old assumptions are being thrownout…old idea that brain is highly adaptive…and that brain cells are continually being replenished and is being reorganized by input and experiences we have and the intensity and length of input…we can actually regrow neurons…IQ can rise depending on stimulation…”neoroplasticity”…the brian is plastic and creating new thinking patterns…but it requires intensive, sustained and progressively challenging stimulation…
e.g. watching television actually reprograms the brain…
several hours a day/seven days a week = video games
fMRI – new technology that has hi-res images of brain functions…research shows that generational chnages in how we process information is dramatically different how kids take in, process and store the same information…visual cortex is 15% larger in kids…eye processes and interprets 60,000 times faster than text…brain is designed for visual processes…30% visual of nerve cells vs 8% touch..
Eyes of digital natives work differently than digital immigrants…”Golden Mean”…digital immigrants scan in a z-formation…natives scan sides… they ill unconciously ignore bottom and right side of pages…could this have an impact on learning to reading …immigrants like blank text on white…natives prefer red/green texts easier to read…
digital natives = wired for multimedia = 87% of kids are not text-based learnersvisual-kinesthetic learners but are visual or visual/kinesthetic learners…but majority of assessment is still text /paper based…
can digital bombardement have an impact on way they think and view the world? we are beginning to see an accelerated gap with very young kids…digital kids 2.0…incredible changes taking place on the inside…they view and respond to the world very differently…begins to explain the fundamantal diffrerence between those kids and us…
Guess the question here is not changing understandings because we can all understand this stuff, but the real challenge is changing day to day practice…battling the traditional
Four things need to happen in classroom…
1. New content must be connected immediately…meaningful…short-term memory…difference between rote learning and meaningful learning
2. Previous knowledge and experience will dererime what, where, if they learn…most school work doesn’t interest students…learning must be personal & relevant
3. Learners must be given repeated and differentiated learning opportunities…we learn by practice/exposure in different experiences and over time…
4. Students need to be provided with consistent feedback and repeatedly reinforced…reinforcement looks like…”I really like the way you have done this…good notes…here’s a suggestion…if you box this here you can make it stand out”…kids won’t learn unless they have positive reinforcement first…
How does this happen? Qualitative/formative assessments…test scores were the same for kids tested…but then later gave the same kids the same exam…less than 15% recall on traditional teaching…but no-traditional taught students had over 70% retention after the year…
“Velcro learning” – memorizing facts for test…only supplies one side of piece of velcro…connections must be made for long-term learning to stick…
We are increasingly using standardized tests to increasingly measure non-standardized brains…they only have short attention spans for old ways of learning and teaching…we as educators don’t understand how truly different our digital natives are…today’s students are not who we were trained to teach or our schools were designed to serve..if we can’t see this and change, “who here has the learning problem?”
Our emphasis must be on more than just content recall…to create more than just school-smart people…this shift is so fundamental that the gap is so wide that we can go back to the way things were when we were kids…digital divide…
As adults, we need to have a 21st century cultural awareness and need to have and use the very same 21st century skills we tell our students they need to have…
What can we do?…cartoon strip ZITS…play video games…blog…MMPORPG…second life…become a thumbster…if you don;’t know what these are…you have defined yourself as a DI and that you are part of the digital divide…
This is not limited to a certain geographic or socio-economic section…world wide…
Respect their world, honour their world…we will set them free! If we want to leverage their abilities, we have to be able to go inside their world.
Are kids in your classroom because they have to be there or because they want to be there? If we want to unfold their full genius…their future not our past…we need to create a bridge between their world and our world…
This asks teachers to fundamentally challenge their core belief systems as educators…hard to change…stepping back and totally reconsidering everything we believe about education…we don’t have to throw out everything… “you can’t leap a canyon in two bounds…you either leap it in the first bound or you’re going down” -Tom Peters…what can we do to make the leap…small steps…one small change at a time…
committed sardine website / techsaavy group…resources available…
recommended reading
Ted McCain – “Teaching for Tomorrow” – Corwin Press
Will Richardson – “Blogs, wikis and podcasts”
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Technorati tags: laptop2007, laptopinstitute07, laptopinstitute, ian jukes, education, technology, whipple, conference
Will Richardson
It’s Monday morning in Memphis, the first full day of Lausanne Collegiate School’s Laptop Institute. After the overwhelming experience of NECC in Atlanta, this conference’s personal nature and wonderful hospitality. I deliberately chose to avoid