The term, “digital divide,” is applied to the gap that exists between those who have access to and benefit from the knowledge and skills gained from digital technology and those without such accessibility or skills. Different demographics based on income, age, gender, and location results in some individuals not having the ability to use and learn from the tools provided by this technology. For the purposes of this blog, we will look at the digital divide that exists in the classroom of today. In particular, we will look at how digital literacy is now becoming more important with regards to the student-instructor relationship. It is not necessarily a question of marginalization, but one of potential for inclusion since the tools are already there – in the hands of students. This last point is key. What marks the difference between a student wired for learning and one wired for distraction is how they use the technology they own. Yes, they own this technology and already have easy access to the knowledge it holds. Without guidance, however, students use technology for personal, sometimes downright irrelevant, purposes. Digital technology can be a tool for learning and creative development only if the instructor has the ability to incorporate this technology into their curriculum in an effective, meaningful way. Educators may avoid using digital tools on the reasoning that not all students will have access to them. This reasoning is valid, but it misses the opportunity of the medium. General access to a computer, which is available in most schools, allows students access to the internet where they can navigate through a sea of information on just about any subject. Digital tools, such as Facebook, WordPress, Youtube, and Skype, allow students to communicate, plan, and take their ideas to a new level of higher imaginings. Part one of this series of posts will look at the reasons why digital media is an effective tool for learning and a necessary tool for life in this era.
Wired to the Wireless World
Harnessing Leisure
Don Tapscott’s 2008 sequel, Grown Up Digital, follows his first investigation of the Net Generation that premiered in his 1998 success, Growing Up Digital. In this book, he argues that the Net Generation is different because they are connected with a new, wireless surrounding. He argues that other generations must realize that digital media has become an intrinsic part of Net Gen’s lives. In response to the evidence that students are performing poorly in traditionally-taught classrooms, many commentators and critics of the Net Generation have realized that curriculum and pedagogy must change in order to appeal to and incorporate these new thinkers into a collective, collaborative, online think tank, as opposed to an educational hierarchy that separates students and their teachers.
And yes, they are new thinkers (the science of this is in the second part of this series).
Technology in their lives has made them multi-tasking, info-centric, multi-media using micro-managers (quite a tongue-twister, but a good way to describe the digital natives of today). These social media aficionados have access to the largest network of information known at any time and are taking advantage of it. This dynamic new lifestyle is leaving the traditional, or “industrial” as Tapscott calls it, pedagogy well behind because it undermines this generation’s abilities. For one, they no longer require a traditional classroom structure. Learning takes its own shape with these students, with collaboration being the backbone to helping each student succeed at their own pace and in their own way:
Mass education was a product of the industrial economy. It came along with mass production, mass marketing, and the mass media . . . Pedagogy is based on the questionable idea that optimal learning experiences can be constructed for groups of learners . . . This mass-education idea, however, is being challenged. Students are individuals who have individual ways of learning and absorbing information. Some are visual learners; others learn by listening. Still others learn by physically manipulating something (Tapscott 139).
What Tapscott recognizes in this passage is that students are all different. It is as simple as that (and any student will tell you this – but do you ask?). Tapscott’s model for education is to reboot it up to the standards required of the Digital Age; to upgrade schools into 2.0 Schools because Student 2.0 is already prepared for them. Tapscott provides educators with seven tips. Here they are. Take heed:
1) Do not throw technology in the classroom and hope for good things: Focus on the change in pedagogy, not technology. Learning 2.0 is about dramatically changing the relationship between a teacher and students in the learning process. Get that right and use technology for a student focused, customized, collaborative learning environment.
2) Cut back lecturing: You do not have all the answers. Start asking students questions and listen to their answers. Listen to question students ask too. Let them discover the answer. Let them co-create a learning experience with you.
3) Empower students to collaborate: Encourage them to work with each other and show them how to access the world of subject-matter experts available on the web.
4) Focus on lifelong learning, not teaching to the test: It is not what they know when they graduate that counts; it is their capacity and love for lifelong learning that is important. Do not worry if the kids forget the dates of key battles in history. They can look them up. Focus on teaching them how to learn not what to know.
5) Use technology to get to know each student and build self-passed, customized learning programs for them.
6) Design educational programs according to the eight norms: There should be choice, customization, transparency, integrity, collaboration, fun, speed and innovation in their experiences. Leverage the strengths of Net Gen culture and behaviours in project-based learning.
7) Reinvent yourself as a teacher, professor, or educator: You too can say
“Now, I can hardly wait to get up in the morning to go to work”
(Tapscott 148).
Harnessing Genius?
Essentially, Tapscott is providing simple tips that can amount to significant change. It is about connecting with students on their level, since their level represents the standards of the digital world.
Brain 2.0: A Matter of Mind over Machine
In the chapter entitled, “The Net Gen Brain,” in Grown Up Digital Tapscott provides an interpretation of data from studies that analyze how the Net Gen thinks differently than previous generations. They have grown up on a media diet and, as a result, process information much quicker. Their ability to process information makes them natural multi-taskers who can switch from project to project, or screen to screen, without the fear of losing focus. Here is the catch: their focus is short-lived, not concentrated and/or meditative. Net Geners have difficulty analyzing, perceiving, and explaining the information they gather so easily (Tapscott 108-110). Knowledge is founded upon the examination and contemplation of information. Therefore, without the ability to form this foundation, Net Geners are left swimming in a sea of information.
Sometimes, they are left to drown.
The ability to read has also become a difficult task. Since Net Geners tend to switch from one topic to the next, reading a couple of chapters in a book (never mind an entire work of literature) may seem like a strenuous, even boring, task. Instead, Net Gen readers tend to scope for the most relevant information, categorize this information, and structure the narrative according to what they have gathered. Information processing has now become more like the machines Net Geners use: quantitative vs. qualitative, logistical vs. abstract, significance vs. meaning. Their interaction with fast-paced multimedia presentations daily forces them to mentally hold onto what is ‘important’ and what is not, or ‘waste.’ This can be frustrating, for instance, for a literature teacher who is trying to teach her/his students Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (with the many rants and rambles in this text!) because it undermines the purpose of reading the material if the main points (the most imperative ones) can be found on the net. Reading and information processing is different, therefore, for the Net Gen than other generations. How can we see the positive in this change? Tapscott explains,
In some ways, searching on the Internet is more demanding than reading in the conventional way . . . The online reader must not only read the text and understand it, but create his own mental journey as he clicks on the links to search for information . . . Donald Leu of the New Literacies Research Team at the University of Connecticut believes we need to redefine literacy to include “literacy skills necessary for individuals, groups, and societies to access the best information in the shortest time in order to identify and solve the most important problems and then communicate this information (Tapcott 112).
Reading is no longer sitting back and reading word for word, but rather gathering concept by concept while flipping from page to page and back to front (in other words, it is dynamic, not sequential). By calling this reading disorganized, one is not realizing its significance. Net Gen readers gather and collect like pros and seek the data before meaning. This type of reading can help instructors develop ways to coordinate their students to search for the meaning within the data that they have found. If instructors know that their students are not used to reading novels or text books sequentially, they may want to guide the student through the text and indicate how separate pieces of information connect. In other words, help their students re-organize what they read. Better still, instructors may also want to include one of the textual elements the Net Gen really responds to: images, especially mobile images. Moving images are intrinsic in multimedia presentations. Most students are used to dealing with them, watching them, and interacting with them. For instance, a psychology professor may want to include images and video of the brain and the many complex neurological processes within her/his lecture in order to get a response from her/his students. Paper graphs and charts simply do not do the trick anymore. Mobile images provide the opportunity to witness concepts one is learning about in a text and to, if the technology permits it, interact with these concepts. Therefore, auditory, visual, and kinetic learners all benefit from this. These three learning styles that have been identified by educators often never interact. Multimedia presentations solve this problem and serve all types of learners. As well, the professor may want to interact with students on the web, through an online educational program, such as Blackboard Learning, and post assignments, links, and lectures. The instructor provides the information to be browsed through and re-organized by the student. Since scanning has replaced reading material sequentially students can take material and analyze it without jeopardizing their main skill of multi-tasking.
Works Cited:
Tapscott, Don. Grown Up Digital. McGraw-Hill. New York: 2009. Print.
Education 2.0: An interview with Don Tapscott discussing the new educational institute and the future changes that are to occur in the near future.
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