Understanding Digital Learners: Learning in the New Digital Landscapes

by Ian Jukes ianjukes.com

session handout

Other handouts from this presenter are available at:

http://web.mac.com/iajukes/thecommittedsardine/Handouts.html

Kids today are experiencing a world today that is completely different from the world that we grew up in - and the gap is getting bigger.

7 Major changes that education must make to match students and their digital learning styles and for participating in 21 Century digital culture.

1. Time for education to catch up

Still important to keep traditional learning and assessment but traditional literacy is no longer enough.
Kids now are neurologacally different. It's hard to abandon our old practices. Recommeded starting a digital diet - where we try something new each week to immerse yourself in a part of digital nature online culture (like reading online commics, playing video games, exploring online worlds, read and respond to a blog, use skype, join a social network, buy something on ebay etc). The list of new technologies goes on forever.

2. Teach to the whole mind

Not just focusing on "no child left untested' or delivery of content. Need to focus on deeper opportunities for student learning for all learners. The primary information sources for education are still text books and worksheets and technologies that are student's personal tools are often banned in schools. Traditional learning is "so boring" for digital learners. The 'flat world' places more value on creativity, higher order thinking and problem solving - these are needed by a greater percentage of citizens (learners) than ever before. What world are we preparing students for? - their future or our past?
"A whole new mind: Moving from the information age to the conceptual age" - book by Daniel Pink
Prosumers - Producers and comsumers of knowledge.
Fluency - unconcious skills, literacy - concious/explicit skills.
Technological fluency - transparent use of digital tools to perform a task - doesn't matter what the tool is, it's what you do with it.
Media fluency -being able to look critically at the content of media and understand how that medium is being used to shape our thinking. Not passive viewing or consuming - it's about creating and publishing original products. Students need to be able to communicate fluently in all media just in the same way that we learnt to communicate in text.
Information Fluency - the ability to unconcisous and intuitively interpret information in all forms to understand what they need to. About asking good questions, accessing and aquiring, analyse and authenticate, apply (through contribution too), assess the process as well as the product.
These fluencies are not the domain of specific subject but across all learning.

3. Shifting the instructional Approach

Don't give the students the answers or exactly where they have to go - if you tell the whole story students won't be motivated to find and learn. There is a time to tell the story but we can't do it all the time. Shift from a traditional approach to 'teaching lazy' - empowering students to become independent thinkers not just regurgitating what has come in the past and what we have told them. Teachers need to have a progressive withdrawl from students lives. Our job as educators is to make sure that our students don't need us by the time that they leave school. If students fail we should encourage them to try again. Students shouldn't be dependant on their teachers. In an age of infowhelm it's not possible for teachers to be an expert in everything.

Dale's Learning Cone / Learning Pyramid or Triangle

 If we want understanding, fluency and profficiency we can't just lecture our students (direct instruction). We need students that can do more than just 'doing school' by giving problems first and teaching second.

4. Access information natively

Ian provided an fascinating mix of quotes about the threats that technologies like slates, pencils, store bought ink, ballpoint pens, computers and more recent online technologies - the pattern of fear repeats itself.

Creating and Connecting Study - these devices are an important part of students lives.

5. Let students collaborate
21C collaboration goes WAY beyond students working in traditional groups. We live in a network age that has fundamentaly changed the way that we do business - collaboration rather than competition... This is the way that kids collaborate online (in digital mobs) yet the norm at school is to build competition and only participate on a local not a global level.

6. Let students creat products that reflect content and process
Learning is not just about the product or the tool - its about the process involved in created that product with the tool. The tool is not used because it is 'cool' but because they the most powerful tool to match the need or solve the problem. Students will use technologies in completely different ways from what we expect them to do. Teachers are there to help students do what they do BETTER.

7. Re-evaluate assessment and evaluation

Still a place for traditional assessment but we need to balance this with ongoing assessments and evaluation that are tools for changing student learning. Students need authentic autdiences, opportunites to make mistakes, timely and meaningful feedback and guidance. Our task as educators is not just to do a better jor at teaching 19 and 20 C content but to prepare and engage students in work and life in the 21C.

Other resources

21st Century Fluency Skills: Attributes of Digital Learners

21st Century Fluency Audit Tool

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky

The
Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and
Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)
by Mark Bauerlein

Teaching for Tomorrow by Ted McCain (order from Corwin Press)

Teaching the digital generation: no more cookie cutter high schools - book by Ian Jukes and another author