Ian Jukes on What are the most profound effects that digital bombardment has on children? How is this changing the way educators need to teach.

Ian Jukes November 1, 2011
http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=2265


What are the most profound effects that digital bombardment has on children? How is this changing the way educators need to teach?

The central issue is that kids today look pretty much the same as we did growing up, which belies the fact that on inside they are completely different. Because of digital bombardment - because of their pervasive exposure to digital technology - exposure that primarily happens outside of school hours - that this digital bombardment is literally wiring and rewiring kids’ brains on an ongoing basis. Their brains are constantly adapting to accommodate all the technology they spend so much time surrounded by.

They are what Canadian futurist Don Tapscott calls “screenagers”—the first generation that has grown up with a computer mouse and the assumption that images on a screen are to be interacted with. These technologies are their new learning tools and also are something to project their very identity onto - what writer Marc Prensky calls “digital natives.”

They’ve developed a “cultural brain” profoundly affected by digital culture. Because of digital bombardment, the brains of today’s children are changing physically and chemically.

They are actually neurologically wired differently than we are.

The problem is that many teachers haven’t had the same digital, online high speed experiences that their students have, so naturally many teachers only feel comfortable processing information at the conventional speeds they have experienced most of their lives. And, as a result, they don’t understand or appreciate the digital generation’s need for speed.

So after digital learners have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours of their lives before and after school, and on weekend and holidays playing video games, surfing the web, using cellphones and other digital devices wandering around in virtual environments, they come to school where many of them tell me they feel like they’ve literally run into a wall when they are confronted by the awesome technological power of an overhead projector or a dry erase whiteboard.

To really connect with the digital generation, educators need to start by acknowledging the absolute centrality of digital culture to their lives; and be willing, at least part of the time, to acknowledge, accept, to embrace and even show some respect for the digital world that is an everyday and internalized part of their students’ lives.

2. What are the new thinking skills that today’s workers need? How should educators change the way they teach to make sure they equip students with these skills?

Great question!!! Over the past two years, we have asked this question of more than 2000 people from all walks of life - politicians, business folks, educators, parents...Inevitably it seems to come down to six major things - first, students need the ability to solve complex problems in real-time.

Second, students need to be creative. They need to be able to think divergently and creatively in both digital and non-digital environments to create novel and useful solutions.

Third, they need the ability to think analytically.

Comparing, contrasting, evaluating, synthesizing, and applying without instruction or supervision. Being able to use the higher end of Bloom’s Taxonomy

Fourth, they must be able to collaborate seamlessly in both physical and virtual spaces, with real and virtual partners in traditional and digital settings.

Because the most powerful technology in the classroom was, is and will remain...a classroom teacher.

Fifth, they must be able to communicate effectively - not just using text or speech, but in multiple multimedia formats.

And finally, they must develop an appreciation of the social, the aesthetic, the esoteric, the philosophical, the moral, and the ethical. We want to nurture students who are socially functional and prepared to operate in the new and changing world they’re going to live in. We want to help them develop the skills that will make them a good person, a good citizen - parent, a community member and a positive contributor to our nation. We may quibble about the language a little, but every group of stakeholders we ask the question to from parents up to national level officials give us more or less the same answers.

We believe that traditional emphasis literacy is not enough. We believe that even if we were to educate our students to standards of the traditional literacies and the provincial/state curriculum, as we are doing in our schools, that our students would be literate by the standards of the 20th century, but they wouldn’t be literate by the standards of the 21st Century - if we’re going to prepare our students for the world that awaits them once they leave school, we need to move our thinking, we need to move our training beyond our primary fixation on the traditional 20th century literacies to a new and different set of 21st century fluencies - the process skills that are absolutely essential for success in the new working and living culture of the 21st century.

3. How can educators keep up with the new media and technological developments that their students are accessing without becoming overwhelmed or neglecting other aspects of their work?

This is the wrong question. I could put a state of the art piece of technology in the hands of every single student, every single teacher, and every administrator - and if that's all I do, the only thing that's going to change is that the technology bill not to mention the power bill is going to be a hell of a lot bigger. Because the most powerful technology in the classroom was, is and will remain...a classroom teacher. But not just any classroom teacher - it has to be a classroom teacher with a love of learning, an appreciation of the aesthetic, the esoteric, the ethical, and the moral - a teacher who understands Bloom and Gardner - who understands how different students learn at different stages of their lives.

The fundamental issue we are facing in the 21st Century classroom has very little to do with hardware and everything to do with HEADWARE - a focus on critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, information fluency, 21st Century collaboration, and what it means to be a global digital citizen in the new digital landscape. If teachers are willing to make a commitment to this, not only will test scores go up, but students will leave our schools with the essential skills needed to survive in the culture of the 21st Century.

4. Why do students today process information, interact and communicate in fundamentally different ways than any previous generation before them? Each generation of students is, of course, presented with new ideas and new technologies—for example, the eras of the telephone, the television and the personal computer. What makes this particular generation unique?

Digital learners have had lifelong experience operating at twitch speed. For them waiting for their computer to start up, waiting for files to download, waiting in a lineup to do something is a complete waste of time. This is primarily due to their constant lifelong exposure to video games, handheld devices, cell phones, hypertext, and all of the other aspects of our increasingly digital, high paced world. As a result of this chronic lifelong digital bombardment, digital kids have had far more experience at processing information at a far faster rate than we do. So naturally, they’re far better at dealing with high speed information.

To coin a phrase from the movie Top Gun, the digital generation has an internalized "need for speed" - digital is their native language - it’s the way they grew up.
Consequently, if we want connect with the digital generation, we need to start by acknowledging the absolute centrality of digital culture to their lives and be willing, at least part of the time, to acknowledge, accept, to embrace and even show some respect for the digital world that is an everyday and internalized part of their students’ lives.

... we now understand that the brain is constantly creating new thinking patterns throughout our lives.

5. In your presentation, you make reference to the concept of “neuroplasticity.” What does it mean and why is it important for educators to understand it in terms of today’s learners?

Neuroplasticity is the process of the ongoing reorganization & restructuring of the brain where the neurons are constantly rearranging themselves, making new connections, and pruning unnecessary ones - literally that the brain is plastic and malleable

So contrary to traditional assumptions about how the brain and mind function, we now understand that the brain is constantly creating new thinking patterns throughout our lives. It’s important to understand that the brain is like a tree. Early on there’s a flurry of growth as a tree grows extra branches, extra twigs and extra roots. Then, over time, the unused branches or pathways get pruned away or wither and die.It’s this pruning that gives a tree its shape for the future.

The very same thing happens in the brain. There’s a lot of truth to the old phrase "Use it or lose it" The cells and connections that are redundant - the cells and connections that are seldom used get neurally pruned away. Over time unused or under utilized neural pathways wither and die.

Additionally, as new neural connections neural connections form during the early stages of life, the most heavily used pathways, the pathways that get sparked the most frequently, become coated or insulated with a substance called myelin, which is a fatty insulating sheath that speeds signal transmission in the brain.

Being insulated in myelin will boost neural signal transmission speeds in the brain by more than 13 times. Which is a jump in speed equivalent to switching from dial-up to broadband. Myelinated circuits not only transmit 13 times as fast, they also transmit 30 times more information per second. So these myelinated neural circuits not only have greater speed but also greater bandwidth.

So you might ask, what does this mean? It means that if you have a student who spends the majority of their time focusing on music or sports or academics, those are the cells and neural pathways that will become hard-wired and insulated.

However, if you have students who spend the majority of their time lying on the couch playing video games or watching TV, those are the cells and connections that are going to flourish.

In the end, the most used and useful connections develop into a complex high-speed neural network as a result of this regular exposure,and if the connections are not used or useful, they get pruned away. That's what neuroplasticity is and why it's important for teachers to understand it in terms of today's learners.

6.In your presentation, you’ve come up with eight key learning preferences of digital learners and compared them with the “old-school” teaching styles. Why is it vital for today’s educators to adapt their teaching strategies to their students’ learning preferences rather than the other way around? Should we be at all concerned about this massive exposure to digital media?

Wow - a pretty big and complicated question to answer in 25 words or less, but here goes. The digital generation is frequently criticized, derided, misunderstood, misrepresented and disrespected in the press. They’re often accused of being intellectual slackers and anti-social beings who lack even basic social skills. However, the research says that on the contrary, for the vast majority, the digital world is a far from an isolating experience - constantly in contact with one another. They’re a highly social generation. Here’s the difference, they’re just not social the way that we’re social

They live at least part of the time in digital worlds they’ve created for themselves, they play Warcraft, they play Mass Effect and hundreds of other MMORP games that are exciting and engaging. In these virtual environments they create and control everything - they’re users - they’re active - there’s excitement, novelty, risk, the company of peers. They observe, they inquire, they participate, discuss, argue, play, shop, critique, and investigate. As a result, they become easily frustrated because they expect, in fact they demand to be able to be in control. The problem is that what they expect and experience in their world outside of school with their games and websites is completely at odds with what they experience in the classroom where everything is controlled by adults . They sit in classrooms where things are hierarchical, unidirectional, inflexible and centralized where the teacher stands at the front of the room talking to them non-stop without even showing nice pictures.

It’s boring,they control nothing, they have to sit there passively and listen - for them, school is all about being passive observers and learning endless deferred gratification; and I can absolutely guarantee you that it will not be possible much longer to engage young people in an educational system where the quality of experiences the school provides aren’t as inviting and engaging as the quality of the experiences they can get outside the school. The digital generation will never accept the traditional stand and deliver educational model - they need to be in a situation where they’re controlling things and that can never happen in the current school environment

7. If you could share one key piece of advice for educators navigating this new digital frontier, what would it be?

Every generation since the time of Socrates and Plato, including our parents, has looked at the next generation - including us - and said, what’s wrong with those kids? There’s nothing wrong with these kids. They’re just different – neurologically different – that’s why they see the world differently – they engage with the world differently.

There is a fundamental change going on in our culture and many adults refuse to recognize or accept this. We have every right to expect the digital generation to respect, understand and engage with our world and our values - that's how we transmit culture - that's how we transmit democracy, from one generation to the next. But in the same way that we have every right for them to respect our world, we absolutely also need to take the time to respect, understand and engage with their world and their values. Just because we were here first doesn’t mean we can ignore their world. And we ignore their world at our peril.



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