Culminating Statement
So we come to the end of this exciting blogging adventure and I have to ask my self what have I learned?
The main issue that has struck me about the literature in general is that, for most intents and purposes, we are really talking theoretically. A good deal of these theories and concepts, while perfectly possible are not always practical to implement. Even as more and more members of the digital generation move into the profession of teaching there will still be a number of older and less technologically proficient teachers in schools. There will need to be significant paradigm shifts from that generation in order to facilitate the growth of technology based teaching.
It is strange also that, with the vast potential to demonstrate our technical skills and know how, most of we young, creative, digital native student teachers, myself included, haven’t gone far beyond the text and images that would be indicative of a chalk and talk teacher, which none of us are. I know after this experience that I will take every opportunity available to engage with media in my presentation of content in the classroom. I’ll teach that way, even if I don’t blog that way.
If have found some interesting launching pads from where to go towards creating a classroom for the digital generation. Jonassen et al’s idea of the potential for computers to be used as “mind tools” in education was a particularly interesting idea. If we use them effectively, content can be adapted to suit the new ways that people think and process information. Use of databases, hypertext and wikis can be an effective way of promoting non-linear and critical evaluation of information by students. This fits in with the culture of multi tasking that is prevalent amongst children of the digital generation.
Multi-tasking is one of the common themes that runs trough much of the literature on teen digital culture. John Seely Brown, in his article Growing Up Digital, suggests that one of the most common misconceptions about teen multi-tasking is that if they are performing more than one operation at the time, they are unable to fully concentrate on any one particular task. Brown suggests that the level of concentration on each task is fairly high, when young people perform parallel activities, and that the attention span of the average member of the digital generation is commensurate to that of the average corporate manager. As teachers, we need to adapt our lesson content to cater for the multi-tasking and parallel processing of our students. To this end, content and concepts should not be logically or sequentially, but taught tangentially and laterally creating meaningful links between the parcels of information that are being presented. This would be far more compatible with the new way of thinking that digital culture has manifested.
The Horizon Report 2008 dealing with “collective intelligence” was of particular interest because of its direct correlation with my ethos of the historical imagination. That is, that as a critical historian, the student must be able to draw upon their knowledge of key trends, political ideas, populist sentiments, et cetera to facilitate the creation of their unique view of the past. Collective intelligence encompasses works that are formed by some for of community interaction, such as wikis, along with statistical information and cultural artifacts. This model allows student to form opinions and knowledge on a given topic area based on the intelligence gathered. This process would be invaluable to teaching the skills of critical thinking.
References
The 2008 Horizen Report (2008). The New Media Consortium
Brown, J. S., (2002). Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn. Change, Growing Up Digital, March/April 2000, pp 10-20.
Jonassen, D., Carr, C. & Yueh, H. (1998) Computers as Mindtools for Engaging Learners in Critical Thinking. TechTrends, 43 (2), 24-32
