What does it mean to be a student in the Digital Era?
Comments: 7 - Date: December 11th, 2008 - Categories: Learning
Today I would like to play the devil’s advocate for a bit. Two weeks ago I saw two vídeos that I found to be disconcerting. The vídeos discussed learning today, and raised several issues regarding DNs and how they relate to technology.
The first vídeo is introduced by the following quotation:
“Today’s child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment, where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented classified patterns subjects, and schedules.”
As the vídeo goes on, many ideas are introduced. Among them is that computing can be incredibly controversial and ubiquitous: on the one hand, we have the possibilities of the Internet and technology in Education, and on the flip side, we have DNs suffering to keep up with their studies, having to be multi-taskers, using their free time to read thusands of webpages, write e-mails, and surf social networks such as Facebook. The vídeo seems to endorse the idea that although the 19th century saw scarcity of information as a problem, maybe having too much information did not solve the problems per say, but just changed how these issues are perceived and dealt with.
The second vídeo is more education driven. Although it also refers to how DNs have to think today, in learning environments where students are bombarded with information that their professors might not even be aware of. This vídeo reveals the extent to which technology can become a negative force, how it creates new challenges in the way we think, and finally, it portrays how unprepared most of us are to deal with such situations.
In addition to this, we must also take into consideration those who have no access to such technology. As we think of solutions to better engage learners who are imersed in ubiquitous computing, we leave victims of the digital divide aside, increasing the distance between those who have access and those you do not.
What has changed for students since the 19th century? Anbd to what extent are these changes positive? Up to what point do students benefit from the use of technology in their lives, before it becomes a hindrance to learning, rather than an aid?
– andré valle
Comment by Jay G - December 12, 2008 @ 12:17 am
With every fundamental shift in the primary mass communication medium human thought methodologies are changed over several generations.
From Orality to Literacy, by Walter Ong, details the mental and social shifts that result from these changes in medium. Our history is speckled with broad, sweeping medium and thought changes. But, at no point in history have those shifts arrived at a greater pace than in the last 150 years.
The first notable method of communication between humans was oral and visual. The visual aspect was an extension of expression to the oral elements, which were better for when line of sight was unavailable. Over time this evolved to being primarily oral communication, although we still take some cues from visual communication in the form of physical gestures. As oral communication became more complex humanity learned to tell stories and to thrive. Perhaps no other invention in the history of humanity has had a greater impact than the ability to communicate complex ideas and then act upon them. During these time it is likely that humanity progressed from being focused on survival to having time for entertainment. This ultimately led to the creation of epic stories.
Epic stories were memorized by members of society. These stories were often told using triptychs to assist memorization. The best story tellers would memorize hundreds of stories and their living was in telling these stories to others. For all of humanity the stories were instructions to survival and they filled the mind. As knowledge grew, specialization developed out of necessity. Specialization freed the minds for other tasks, including the invention of writing. While art and early forms of writing did exist to an extent, they did not have the structure that came to exist in the earliest written systems.
Writing allowed the mind to be freed, the most important knowledge to be stored, and knowledge to be shared without presence. Philosophy arose, time was allowed for the average human to reflect upon life, to ponder, to change. Great wars occurred, power structures were overturned and replaced, humanity changed how it thought.
During that time it is possible that some parents of the old ways said to themselves, “Those silly kids cannot think straight! Look at them with all of their writing, all of their philosophy, they do not know the value of hard work!” Or something similar. Mental methods had changed. But, the resources for this new found form of communication were scarce. It took thousands of years of human development for the next major change. During that time, reproduction, production, of documentation was handled by specialists, by scribes who were some of the previous eras story tellers – while the philosophers dictated to them their thoughts.
Then came mass production of literary materials, the printing press changed humanity. While it was still a specialized task, it was faster by many orders of magnitude. The ability to read spread, revolution came again, and human thought changed. Again the older generations said of the younger, “Those silly kids cannot think straight! Look at them with all their printing, all of their words, they do not know the value of hard work! They do not know the value of the quill!” The mind was freed from the tyranny of the quill.
Communication methods progressed quickly. Wire communication developed. Long distance communication became easier, more accurate. Private wire communication came into existence. The death of mankind was announced, “The telephone will destroy our children! They do not know the value of visiting their neighbor. They talk all day!” The mind was freed from the tyranny of the press, the tyranny of the book, it became possible to extrapolate thought and discovery new ideas. Revolution came.
Wireless communication came into existence. First oral, the radio, then visual, the television. The older generations decried this change, they exclaimed at the lack of will, the lack of effort of a generation. It was easy to be fed knowledge, it was easy to sit, thought was freed. Revolution came.
Computation was sped, wireless and wired communication evolved, interactive television became reality – the computer, the internet. Knowledge was spread like fire. Disorders of thought once left behind came again, “The children cannot think straight! Their minds are destroyed! They have too much information!” They evolved.
With each new communication technique, each revolution, thought methods change, new methods come into existence, and humanity is forever altered. The oldest generations do not understand, they are set in their ways, but they have invented the beast they now fear. The middle generations grasp, they place the new medium within their existing framework, they attempt to tame it, and fail. The latest generation born, just as the medium came into existence, thrives, but suffers because there is none to teach them. Some rise up, some do fail, but all is not lost, they learn to each. The second generation learns to tame the communication, new methods of relating to the medium are learned, and they are taught. The third generation is born to the medium, they rise with it, they are taught how to control it, and they invite. The following generations redefine it, live it, and know nothing different. Progress is had, but at the cost of relearning how to think, how to live, how to survive.
It takes time, but it can be done. There is such an outcry to what exists now because there is more access to it, it has had the fastest effect upon the world of any medium in history, it is changing us, we have changed ourselves. But, we do not know what the results will be until after they have arrived. We are the first generation, some the second. We must learn to teach it, not fear it.
– J/
Comment by Wendy Drexler - December 12, 2008 @ 12:18 am
You make good points and pose some important questions. I’m not personally fond of the term “digital native” because it assumes that children are born with digital knowledge and understanding. The reality is that the digital divide can also exist with students who have access, but haven’t been taught how to use it effectively. My students are juniors and seniors who are starting to experience networked learning for the first time. They are not particularly digitally literate even though they’ve had access to technology their whole lives. Access is critical, but we have a long way to go with those who already have it. I see these as two important, but distinctly different issues.
Pingback by Jay’s Words » Blog Archive » How the Medium Changes Us - December 12, 2008 @ 12:19 am
[…] In response to “What is it being a student today?” […]
Comment by Giovanna - December 12, 2008 @ 3:42 am
My 18 year old brother (who is 10 years my junior) told me recently how baffled he was with multi-volume encyclopedias. He related that they are expensive, a waste of space that no one in school uses since everything is online.
Comment by Lve - December 15, 2008 @ 5:39 am
It is true that In today’s world student’s very much advance in technologies. Also 75% students are being expert in Online technology at school level.
Comment by Abhishek - December 15, 2008 @ 7:23 am
Internet has really come of age and is one of the most important part of Information technology. Technology is getting better with each passing day and it can only go better in the future. But one think we must make correct use of the technology and not misuse them. I think then we have a great future ahead.
Regards
Abhishek
Comment by David Martin - December 30, 2008 @ 8:48 pm
For me, the central question in “What is it being a student today?” is How are students learning today? And then, of course, what constitutes knowledge today?
I think sometimes we get caught up in the technology so much that we forget the dynamics involved. The really exciting things happening to students who are DN’s (and no, they aren’t “born” that way, but they are born into a world that surrounds them with a particular blend of literacies and which we are better off seeing as developmental, or ascending, rather than fixed states of attainment…) is that we are beginning to open up all of the questions that so much of our thinking is rooted within. When a student asks how do we know that, the answer becomes more complicated than what we used to be able to offer: It’s in a book, it’s a fact, etc. Now we have to get more messy in our encounters: well, do you know anything about…? How can we begin to know about…? Knowledge is seemingly less stable. I’m not sure, in the end, that it is. But knowledge DOES change, and certainly what we do with knowledge changes. The whole shift to DN’s becoming content-creators is overwhelming evidence of how much our tools change what we know, how we know, and what we can do with what we know.
The advent of the printing press and the distribution of written texts changed what constituted knowledge. It changed learning.
In “The Gutenberg Elegies,” Sven Birkerts mourned the loss of the reading experience with the development of the internet. Birkerts was convinced in the ’90’s that the death of the book and “traditional” literacy (for lack of a better word) would fundamentally change what we value and how we experience ideas. He was right. But whether that is a loss to be eulogized, or a loss to be understood, respected, and used to understand both the “traditional” notion of “literacy” and the constructs of values and culture, as well as the developing digital literacies and their constructs of values and culture, remains to be seen. I am reminded of “The Education of Henry Adams” in which Adams uses the World’s Fair as an opportunity to see the loss of one world and the beginning of a bold new one. He contrasts The Virgin and The Dynamo as the compelling metaphors of the two conflicting eras, or literacies. Like Rip van Winkle waking up after his twenty year nap, Adams realizes that all has changed. Van Winkle was shocked, as many of us are when a new technology or literacy revolutionizes what we know, and how we know it. Henry Adams’ answer was self-education because, like so many of us DI’s, and DN’s too!, the education we gained in our younger years does not prepare us for such revolutionary change.
Perhaps we have now reached a time where revolutions in knowledge and learning will occur regularly.
As an educator, I find this hugely challenging and exciting. Teaching will never be the same.