Virtual School Society of British Columbia

Live blogged, so please excuse typos and awkward wordkings.

Opening Keynote VSS Conference 2008I’m sitting, at this moment, at the VSS conference in Vancouver, with the whole day to learn and converse. I’m a consumer today, Ian Jukes hits the stage in just a minute, but it was serendipitous to see Kevin McCluskey as I walked in. Kevin is with the New Brunswick DOE, and I’ve worked with him before in Fredericton — he’s traveled just about as far to be here as I have.

At breakfast, I sat with two educators who are DL (distributed learning) educators. They live about 300 Kilometers from Vancouver, and many of their students simply live too far away from any town to regularly attend class. So they have students using online curriculum, resources, and guidance — K-12.

Ian Jukes on StageWatching a video now from the association, but no audio. Perfect. These folks understand 😉

Ian Jukes is a master of visuals. He said it! These kids are “Digital Natives.” They speak digital as their first language. Again, as I’ve said so many times before, what worries me about the native/immigrants distinction is that some teachers may find this to be an excuse not to adopt the new information landscape. “I can’t learn this. I’m an immigrant.”

Jukes is make the point very well, though — leading into brain stuff. Our kids brains are different because of their information experience.

The very first thing to understand is that when we come into the world, only 50% of our brain wiring is done, that 50% is developed as a result of our experiences. I read something about this the other day, about plasticity, I think was the word. Over the last four years, we’ve found that almost everything that we thought we knew about the brain was wrong. We know that we can not change our memory capacities (this is good news). Ah! Neuro Plasticity. That’s the word. Wikipedia calls it Synaptic Plasticity.

Daniel Pink now, right versus the left. I’m seeing my keynote slides crumbling away 😉

So how do you reprogram your brain, “It takes several hours a day, seven days a week.” It’s what’s happening to kids. It’s “digital bombardment,” and it’s changing their brains.

Ian gives a minute of rest every eight minutes or so to share with each other what we’ve heard. This is very brain oriented activity. Some people are struggling with some of this stuff. Is this the first time that our brains have changed. I don’t think so. The difference is that now we know it.

Now he’s showing different MRIs of kids pathways compared to adult pathways, based on the same activity. Kids brains are wired differently. “Game play is reshaping our children’s brains.”

Jukes is sharing some very interesting information about reading, that we (oldsters) typical read in a “Z” pattern. Our youngsters read in an “F” pattern. You can read about this from info design guru, Jakob Nielson, F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content.

Jukes is closing down now. The key question is, “How does this information affect how and what we teach?

12 thoughts on “Virtual School Society of British Columbia”

  1. Neuroplasticity is an important concept, one that you should certainly be reading about.

    Those of us working with the concept of ‘learning networks’ and ‘connectivism’ have been talking about this for some time.

    Have a look here: http://www.downes.ca/post/40141

    Also here:
    http://www.downes.ca/post/43419

    Dave, I know you work really hard and get out and see a lot of people. But I really wish you were more widely read, and that you got your input from a more diverse crowd of people.

    Because – honestly – I’m surprised that you didn’t know about this stuff, considering its central importance to the topics you talk about.

    (p.s. I appreciate your honesty in writing that this was new to you.)

  2. David…
    The thing that struck me the most when I heard Ian Jukes speak was his reiteration of we do things because That’s The Way We’ve Always Done It…TTWADI! If their brains ARE changing, and we can see medically the evidence that this is so, then TTWADI is not going to cut it any more. “How does this information affect how and what we teach?’ We really should be focusing on this question now, shouldn’t we. Let’s stop thinking about TTWADI…it is time to stop admiring the problem and start the tough conversations…what do we do now! Do you know if Jukes has links to this research and data? If I am committed 😉 do you know where on his site to find this data? Thanks for sharing your experience…

    1. Kristin,

      Jukes’ materials for the keynote I just watched are here.

      He also does a presentation called, “TTWWADI (That’s The Way We’ve Always Done It).” The resources for this workshop is here.

  3. I have heard Ian speak three times and am always inspired to work harder to help teachers change. Thanks, David, for reminding me again why I do what I do. Also thanks for the Web 2.0 “showdown” at WEMTA. Came away with more “cool tools” to share! 🙂

  4. It’s nice that these educators are being treated to a lovely show. It’s a shame that it’s completely junk science.

    There is no evidence that children’s brains are different now than they were 20, 30, or 100 years ago. NO EVIDENCE.

    Just as you point out about the digital immigrant/native language, this is simply an excuse to pretend that we don’t know how to teach children. Labeling today’s youth as some sort of weird, different species is a distancing technique, and a poor substitute for embracing the gifts and abilities of all children.

  5. You are correct, Sylvia, it was a great show, and the message did seem to resonate with the audience. But you make an interesting point about brains not having changed in 100 years — because, even though I wasn’t a digital native in the 1950s and ’60s, yet the teaching that was applied to me was a huge miss. My brain wasn’t built for being taught back then.

    So I think I agree with you about whether brain research is all that directly applicable, except to understand that everyone has a different brain.

  6. The danger of practicing science without a license is that the more this nonsense is repeated, the more likely people are likely to believe it.

    Good teachers don’t need sideshow potions to be sensitive to the needs of children.

    Besides, what should a teacher do with this info even if it were true?

    1. It’s an interesting visual, Gary, a sideshow potion — and I suspect that it depends on what you see when you concoct the phrase and what I see when I read it. I think that teachers do need sideshows, which I think you and I would agree involve some part performance and some part shakabuku.

      I do agree with you entirely about “teachers being sensitive to the needs of children.” Ian had only an hour of our attention. A few weeks ago I had the privilege of spending an entire morning with Patricia Wolfe, who works with neuroscientists and educators.

      Her message was not so much that today’s children are different, but that what we’re learning from brain research is exactly how people learn and that we might be able to learn a lot more and a lot later in life than we’d thought.

      But a huge part of her message was that what we’re learning about the brain is wholly consistent with what good teachers have intuitively believed for a long time about the learning experiences that our children need — an intuition, I might add, that has been devalued for the last six years.

      Thanks, Gary…

  7. Dear David,

    I find it interesting to learn about neuro plasticity. I did not know much about it. After reading your blog, I went to read more about the concept. I realized that all teachers need to learn more about how the brain functions in order to appreciate the use of technology as a way to expand their intelligence. The fact that our brains are limited incapacity should give every teacher a reason to enhance the capacity through the use of technology both for personal use and instructional purposes. As I was reading about neuro plasticity, I came across “artificial intelligence.” I thought we need artificial intelligence to perform some of the functions that our brains cannot perform. If we do not teach our children using technology, we are doing a disservice to their brain capacity, we are limiting the development of artificial intelligence that helps in the elasticity of the brain. I think for educators to appreciate the use of technology, they should read more about how the brain functions and explore ways in which more parallels can be found – and made to work- between the human brain and technology, or between the human brain’s functioning and computers.

  8. Kristin: I’m way late to this discussion but I only saw “Juke’s junk” in the summer of ’09. Very quickly: his web site has NO research, because there is none. Any research that I’ve seen shows only NEGATIVE results from too much media bombardment. More children suffer sooner from depression, inability to relate to peers, difficulty working in groups, shall we go on?

    Jukes is a quack. His targets are people, often administrators, who know little or nothing about modern media AND little or nothing about teaching.

    1. Kristin, I have to confess that I considered, for quite a few minutes, not approving your comment — not so much from what you claim, but because you, yourself, do not provide research support for your conclusions about depression, “..inability to relate to peers, difficulty working in groups”, blah blah blah.

      I won’t speak to Juke’s presentation, because it has been such A long time since I watched it. I can attest to the fact that he has had an enormous impact on a lot of educators, especially administrators, in helping them to break out of the shells of complacency into action in adapting their schools to change.

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