Thursday, October 21, 2010

Understanding the Digital Generation

The last session I attended during the tri-association conferences was Ian Jukes' Understanding the Digital Generation. It was a great way to end the conferences and I left with lots to think about and most importantly... lots of things to put into practice!!

Here's a good list of books for educators to read about technology, education and the brain. I look forward to reading them soon!!
•Ibrain: Surviving the technology alteration of the modern mind - Small and Vorgan
•A whole new mind - Pink
•Everything bad is good for you - Steven Johnson
•Brain rules - Medina
•Grown up digital - Tapscott
•The Shallows, what the Internet is doing to our brains - Nicholas Carr
•Toys to Tools (iste) - Liz Kolb
•Spark the revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain - John Ratey

Kids today are neurological different, they live in a digital bombardment. Digital is our students' first language. It's the language they feel most comfortable speaking. We, adults, are digital immigrants. We speak digital as a second language.

Kids have developed hyperlinked minds. The brain is highly adaptive throughout our lives. It is constantly reorganizing based on input, as well as the intensity and duration of the experience. Neuralplasticity allows this. Our intelligence is not fixed. It is under intensive, sustained and progressive stimulation. Neuron cells that are not used get pruned out, just like a tree. The most used connections develop into hardcore. "Myelin" insulates and makes connections in the brain possible. Digital bombardment continually wires kids' brains. They process information in a different way we do.


The following attributes of Digital Learners are important to keep in mind as we teach:
- receive information quickly from multiple multimedia sources (they have a need for speed)
- prefer parallel-processing and multitasking
- read in fundamentally different way
- prefer random access to hyperlinked multimedia
- network and collaborate with others
- prefer to learn just-in-time
- prefer instant gratitude
- prefer learning that is relevant and active

Digital learners need focused attention and continuous-partial attention. We need to find a way to include both in the learning environment we create for them. It is important to know that before, media complemented text, now it's the other way around: text compliments media. If a lecture becomes visual, then students instead of retaining 10%, now retain 65% of the information that is being presented.

We were paper-trained, students now are light and sound trained. Our written media is now replaced by visual media. They learn in a fundamentally different way.

Colors preferences change among cultures. Us Students reject our white and black preferences for text. The prefer:
- red, pink
- orange
- lime green
- black or dark background

Very interestingly: We use a Z pattern to read a page and students use an F pattern to read the same page. They hardly place attention on the right hand side. Ian Jukes suggested adding an image pointing up on the bottom-right to make students want to read this right part of the page.

Another interesting comment that came up was that a career for life is now uncommon. According to statistics, students will have 10-17 careers by the time they are 35. They will have 40 years of ongoing learning instead of a 4 year career. 20-year jobs will not exist anymore. Since life is changing exponentially, it sounds almost ridiculous to stay in the same job all those years, but we still do!! We keep sticking to what we were taught and the way we used to live when we were younger.

Learning goals were also pointed out: Just-in-case learning vs Just-in-time learning. Just-in-case learning goes on today in our schools (just in case it comes in the test, just in case you become an engineer, etc) and should now be replaced by just-in-time learning where students learn how to do something to be able to solve a problem or be part of an experience.

Deferred and instant rewards were also addressed. Kids get many instant rewards, however they need to learn to attain deferred rewards. Online games that students play give them those two kinds of rewards. They get the reward every time they advance to a new level and also by getting recognition from their peers. Players make frequent decisions which lead to those deferred and instant rewards.

Ian Yukes' website is www.fluency21.com (find link to Commit Me). Under Keynote perspectives, the handouts and ppts can be found. Under small bytes, there free websites can be found. All the ppt presentations with the funny pictures he presented are there. His email is ian@fluency21.com
Using my learning...

• Create handouts with the F pattern in mind

• allow different screen colors in students computers

• read all those books that were mentioned!!!

• use their preference of just-in-time learning to teach at the right moments!

• assign projects that require multi-tasking

• teach students how to find information in a fast way (dictionary, calculator, etc)
 
 

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