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Roll up your sleeve, this won't hurt - much! It's prudent protection from the digital pandemic sweeping across our land.
The least painful inoculation involves examining the claims of Gaderian, our not-so-friendly, Pied Piper robot. A recent eSN Special Report (Jan 1, 2010) on convergent education provides evidence of the digital infestation in its clearest form. Let's summarize some of this information in the next four paragraphs, and then take a closer look at the claims under the microscope. (I'll add caps to some of the key words.)
The experts cited in this report indicate that Technology has CHANGED the way the world works and is changing the NATURE of learning itself. Students go to the Internet and learn to question the VERACITY of what they learn in the classroom. The Internet allows for CONNECTION to the external world. In the old days we just had school and the library. Today that limited connectivity would be pretty BLAND, they say. They go on to state that we are now MASTERING the ART of multitasking. Some people believe that when students are multitasking, they are not learning as well, but these writers DISAGREE. And kids may be learning more outside school than in school!
Technology permits students to learn in a NONLINEAR way, but schools are ENTRENCHED in teaching in a linear fashion. They're keeping kids ANCHORED to their communities because they won't let them learn through social networks. They report that the dropout rate has increased and this is because school is less RELEVANT for kids today. Sixty-six percent of kids are BORED in class each and every day. They compare our schools to penal institutions and believe the longer kids are in school, the more school resembles a PRISON. Best practices and teaching guides are holding kids back. Learning needs to be REVOLUTONARY and EXCITING.
Moving right along, they report that all too often technology is simply absorbed by schools, with educators using technology to make their jobs easier. Free online content is available from the Verizon Foundation that includes audio and video, simulations AND GAMES, among other things. The need is to focus on hands-on science and on doing science in the lab LIKE SCIENTISTS DO. Textbooks are not the way scientists learn in the field, they say. PROGRESSIVE schools are UNBUNDLING the completion of courses from SEAT TIME and are focusing on MASTERY. Students should be allowed to bring their own devices from home. Wikis, blogs, social networking, and Skype can all help.
CHANGE IS INEVITABLE. Students need to learn CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS; not MEMORIZE FACTS and spit them back. There's no reason to memorize anything; not when kids have access to information 24/7. Students need to understand what knowledge they're missing, and they need to learn the skills of DISCERNMENT, to understand what online sources are the most valuable and accurate. FINDING INFORMATION is more critical than having it ARCHIVED in our brains. Educators are COWED into accepting things such as more testing and ROTE MEMORIZATION. We're on the path to squeezing out our CREATIVITY.
HELLO?! Let's see if we can distill these contagious claims with a few drops of preventative medicine: First, lets sum up what these folks are saying: Change and revolution are new and exciting, while schools are old and unexciting and that's because they're entrenched in boring memorization and linear methods that stifle creativity.
I have a few questions: How has the nature of learning changed? Any evidence? So your opinion is that multitasking is a good way to learn. If the nature of learning has changed for you fearless revolutionaries, this is a good example of why it shouldn't. You're putting your opinion up against scientific research. A bit of information you picked up from the Internet? I thought the whole purpose of this revolution was to help us think like scientists, not armchair speculators with too much "seat time."
Kids are usually bored unless they are kept busy.
Is boredom always bad? How else do we learn frustration tolerance? When do we get a chance to think? If the drop-out rate has climbed, isn't this an indictment of electronic games and other technologies that give immediate pleasure and encourage a consumer mentality?
Change has always been inevitable, but change can be good or bad.
The question is what are we becoming and why? Memorizing is necessary as a foundation in many areas and working memory is not archived; it's used to expand and enrich the brain. Discernment requires an appreciation of context, prioritizing and global thinking. How can a young child discern what is helpful and harmful on the Internet? Children are not midget adults; they need to be educated by red-blooded teachers using best-teaching practices.
Connecting to the external world will help us challenge our teachers? How about connecting with each other, on a face-to-face basis, so we can develop a solid self-concept and learn about emotion, nuance and non-verbal communications? I doubt that "cut and paste creativity" will allow us to challenge anyone.
I agree on one point. It's important to learn lab skills in a real lab, supported by a real teacher. But learning to think like a scientist can be and is taught through textbooks. Scientists are lost in the lab when they don't know the basics. Try becoming a scientist without opening (and studying) lots of books on statistical analysis and experimental design.
Hopefully, these germ-laden pronouncements won't infect us, because they reflect a new way of learning that is neither well thought out - nor scientific.
