Jude2004 celebrated his 51st birthday yesterday. In his comment on Act like Natives, he (or she) claims to know more about technology than his students. He claims to be a native. Do I believe him? I sure do.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting to nearly 200 school technology contact people here in Wake County (Raleigh). They were teachers, media specialists, a couple of assistant principals, and a handful of tech facilitators. I like to start this presentation by harkening back to those giddy days just before the Web, when a very few of us were paying attention, and recognizing that something BIG was on the horizon.
I asked how many of them had used Gopher. About three-forths of the hands went up. This surprised me. I asked about Telnet. Again, a vast majority of the hands when up. Then I asked how many had heard of blogs, and to no surprise, most of the hands went up. But when I asked..
How many were blogging, I saw only three hands.
How many read blogs? Perhaps 20.
How many had listened to a podcast? Maybe ten.
How many had podcasted? Zero!
How many used flickr? Zero!
How many knew about social bookmarks? Zero!
Delicious (del.icio.us)? Zero!
An interesting number, zero. On a school paper, it means you didn’t do your assignment.
These are educators who, in the early 1990s, were on the edge. They were paying attention, recognizing an emerging revolution in information, and latching on. What happened between then and now? Why have they missed the new revolution?
Am I missing something?
Or could it be, that the continuing dominant teaching tool of today’s classrooms, the textbook, could not possibly hold any information about the new web? Could it be that we have come such a short distance in our schools since 1990, that our teachers are less equipped, less encouraged, and far less free to pay attention to the world around them, than they were more than a decade ago?
We desperately need… we may not survive without… a generation of young people who are imaginative, inventive, fearless learners, and compassionate leaders. Yet, what can we say, as educators, about the students we are producing. We can prove that they can read, do basic math on paper, and they are able to sit for hours filling in bubble sheets.
No generation in history has ever been so thoroughly prepared for the industrial age.
How have we allowed ourselves to be led by such a miserable lack of imagination?
I have got to get out of this funk!
Sheesh, if I wasn’t down before reading this =)
I guess maybe this shows a potential problem with the whole Digital Native/Immigrant concept. There are a lot of digital natives out there that are still functioning at their original level of introduction when they first became natives. The real question is: are you a digital native that has continued to immigrate as the technology developed?
Like many of the people in your workshop, my introduction to technology came on my parents’ computer when I was about 2 (1979). The first word I learned was “run” so I could start a game after it loaded into memory in BASIC. I too was part of Web 0.5 (BBS), Web 0.7 (Gopher/Archie), Web 0.9 (Mosaic), and so on. And yet, I also have kept up with changes. I am reminded of Fullan’s work on change. It seems that there are some pioneers that have become homesteaders and aren’t quite sure they want to pack up from their comfortable life and head out into the wilds again where things can be messy and potentially dangerous.
This was a really interesting post for me.
I am currently teaching a course for pre-service teachers (mostly second year students). I designed the course with the assumptions that these students would be ready to fly with many of the tools listed in this post: blogs, social bookmarking, Flickr, podcasts, etc. since they are digital natives. I have been really surprised by the fact that barely any of these students were aware of these tools. If you get past e-mail and IM these students do not come equipped with these skills. They do however learn them much easier than the digital immigrants I’m used to working with in schools.
These students are currently reading Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century and other readings scattered around the web. They are posting reflections of these readings in blogs. Many of them came into the course with the thought that teachers should continue to teach without technology. They feel that a good teacher doesn’t need technology to help their students learn.
Fortunatley, I am slowly getting them to change some of their thoughts on this. It made my wonder “Why?” do they feel this way. My thoughts are that they are the products of teachers who did not use technology. Many of them have noted that they barely ever touched a computer in high school. It made me think of a comment one of my professors, Kevin Ryan (Boston Univ.), made in my undergrad studies. He told us that most of us were the “curriculum winners”. Curriculum winners were students that learned best the way that most teachers teach. He felt that was why most of us wanted to become teachers – we were successful at this thing called school.
It kind of scares me to think about this. Are we destined to continue to produce new teachers who fear technology use in the classroom? My students are fortunate enough to have a technology course. What about pre-service programs that do not offer such a course? How many college professors of pre-service teachers are adept at information and technology skills (philosophically I’d rather see the technology come from here instead of a separate course)? Will it take another generation of teachers to create meaningful change in technology use in schools?
As usual, I think I’ve thrown in more than my 2¢ worth.
On a more positive note…
Thank you Dave for leaving a comment in one of their blogs the other day about Chapter 1. It was a really big “aha” moment for my students. It made a huge impression on the students of how connected the web really is. If anyone else is intrested in the thoughts of pre-service teachers and their thoughts about technology check out our blogs. You can find them off my bloglines account. Look is the CS211A and CS211B folders.
Not to sound harsh, but are you missing the forest for the trees? It’s wonderful that you like Flickr, podcasts, social bookmarking, etc., but at what point did these become the new “canon” of a technology-literate educator? It’s as if there’s a non-critical rush to embrace Web 2.0 tools that’s not unlike the embrace of the latest alt rock band– “hey, buddy, are you in the know?”
Teachers and educators need thematic advice, not “latest super tool” advice. What are the themes we should be embracing in terms of technology? What are clean ways to open the school wireless networks to computers brought from home? How do we respect each other online? What are our own identities and roles in new communications mediums? How is learning improved through the use of virtual workspaces (you know, using the cognitive tools called laptops and desktop computers).
After spending a little time looking at secondlife.com, for example, I think our next challenge is to think about individual choices about technology and learning and real life. These choices are much higher order than choosing to use Flickr, but they are related.
I think David and Jim both bring up great points here. I am about to post a similar idea on my blog as I had a similar experience to Dave’s, yesterday. I was presenting at a Louisiana educator’s technology conference (LACUE) yesterday a session on RSS. I started off the session with a pop quiz. I had about 50 people in the room.
Question 1 – How many of you have heard of RSS? 5 hands up.
Question 2 – How many of you have used RSS? 0 hands up.
Question 3 – How many of you know about blogs? About 10 hands up.
Question 4 – How many of you follow blogs? About 4 hands up.
Question 5 – How many of you know what a podcast is? About 8 hands up.
Question 6 – How many of you have ever listened to a podcast? 0 hands up.
I think the frustration Dave is feeling, and the question Jim is asking falls on the shoulders of trying new things. At this conference, there were several sessions on Excel, Powerpoint, KidPix, etc. There were a few that talked about some neat projects, but not neccesarily new ideas. During my session (and I don’t want to sound like I’m on an ego trip here), I actually saw people get excited about a new tool that could be used to help teach their current curriculum. You see, it’s not about Flickr, or del.icio.us, or any other tool out there. It’s about being forward thinking and trying new things. It’s about getting excited about teaching and learning. It’s about envisioning potential. When was the last time we got excited about PowerPoint.
Following my session, I got this comment on my blog:
“Great job on the presentation! Thank you for presenting. I really liked how you chose to present something unique and focused instead of the repetitious “powerpoint and digital editing sessions” that normally engulf these conferences. Although I was somewhat familiar with RSS, I really did not know the potential of such sites as Bloglines. One of my issues is the fact that there is so much information out there to learn that I could spend 24/7 on the internet going from site to stie and not really absorb anything. RSS is a very good suggestion to help organize such issues.”
Jim, you ask, “What are the themes we should be embracing in terms of technology? What are clean ways to open the school wireless networks to computers brought from home? How do we respect each other online? What are our own identities and roles in new communications mediums? How is learning improved through the use of virtual workspaces (you know, using the cognitive tools called laptops and desktop computers).”
How do we teach our kids to respect each other, how do we teach them their roles in this new world, and how do we get a grasp on just how far this can take us if we as educators are not brave enough to broaden our comfort zones?
David- You struck a note with me when you mentioned “freedom”. With the immense weight given to testing and assessment, teachers have nowhere’s near the freedom to plunge into personally compelling content and bringing these tools in to help make some magic. If I were starting to teach in this climate, I don’t know that I would be in the profession now.
If teaching is not 100% art, well it’s not 100% science either and it seems that some are bent on legislating the latter. It makes for a sad place for young professionals.
It’s painfully ironic that the immense possibilities that current technology brings happens to blossom in a time when we appear to be obsessed with reams of bubble sheets.
David,
Stephen Abram had an interesting post about this at http://stephenslighthouse.sirsi.com/archives/2006/02/internet_voyeur.html