Teaching The Digital Generation
Some of my take-aways from Ian Jukes and Lee Crockett’s session:
About digital learners: Brain researchers are showing evidence that our kids are actually neurologically different than we are… both chemically and wired differently. This is due to the bombardment of media they have been exposed to since birth. “Kids these days” are different. This has always been the case, but Jukes says this generational gap is significant and exponential.
Digital Generation kids live at twitch speed, prefer random/non-linear access to information, and are hyperlinked to unlimited amounts of information/media. Their teachers still prefer slow, linear and incremental release of textual information. These learners are not the learners for whom the current educational system was designed to teach. We still rely on standardized tests to measure non-standardized learners. Students vote with their feet and their attention. Traditional literacy is no longer enough.
Jukes defines multitasking as “continuous partial attention” to many tasks at one time. He says kids who show symptoms of ADD are not disabled, they are other-abled. Jukes sites research by John Medina http://brainrules.net/ concerning digital learners. (I’ll have to investigate this later. Ineresting stuff.) Research shows students who are wired for non-linear, random access may not be capable of following linear thought without some training and intervention.
Students prefer “just in time” learning vs “just in case” learning. Why do we still teach things because students might need to know them. There’s too nuch info/data to do this anymore. and Google makes it irrelevant anyway.
Crockett talks about teaching problem solving using “solution fluency” in a way that I had never considered before. Six steps:
-define. Define the task/problem
-discover. Understand and explain the problem through historical context.
-dream. Imagine things as they should be.
-design. Condust a gap anaylsis. How do I get there? Make a roadmap.
-deliver. Create something that solves the problem, explains the outcomes.
-debrief. Conduct an evaluation, peer evaluation and reflect on the solution.
There was much more after the problem solving bit, but this is what resonated the most with me. Oddly, in a session on hyperlinked, random access digital learning, this is one of those things that is NON-LINEAR that our kids need to master. And, I got sidetracked thinking about how to use these steps in my classroom…and teach it to my own kids. Great session. I’m glad I was there. My brain hurts. I’ll come back to this later…
