As most of the Thursday class knows, I didn't do the reading in time. Extremely embarrassing when you leave in the middle of class because you can't participate in the discussion. Anywho.... I did the readings and I'm just picking the 1st 4 chapters because it's just easier this way. So without further adieu, here goes something.
Digital Natives/Digital Immigrants
This article discusses how technology has impacted the
students of today compared with the students of yesterday. Digital Natives are those that have been born
into the world of the internet, email, computers, games, cell phones and most
technology. The Digital Immigrants are
all the other folks; the ones that have grown up in an age where learning meant
picking up a book and reading words on a page rather than on a screen or
sitting through a lecture in class, rather than watching Youtube. The evidence is all around us. In class, we utilize computers, learn from Wikipedia,
get on our smart phones, and use games to learn (like 3D Gamelab). The evidence I clearly see is in my own
family. My 7 year old daughter has been
known to show grandma how to play angry birds on her phone. She has also asked me a question to which I
didn’t know the answer to and when I replied “I don’t know.”, she then
responded with “Daddy, why don’t you Google it?”. The article is extremely convincing because
the technological revolution is clearly upon us and if we were to utilize old
school ways of teaching, today’s youth would not only have to learn by the
means of the way the old school teacher is teaching but also apply those
teaching to modern day paradigms.
Do They Really Think
Differently?
Neuroplasticity – the notion that our brains can be rewired
or change in the way we think about things is the main idea of this
article. As discussed in the previous
chapter, the Digital Natives are learning things in a whole new way than their
predecessors learned. Do They Really
Think differently discusses how not only are the students (the Digital Natives)
just thinking differently, but also that their brain structure is also
different than the Digital Immigrants.
Studies have been done in rats, ferrets and people that conclude that
brains adapt to various ways of learning.
The most intriguing example that the book gives is where they rewired
ferrets brains with the eyes and ears nerve endings being switched around and
the ferrets’ brains where actually able to overcome and adapt and still
function. This proves to me that because
the technology era is here to stay, that even human brains are going to be
developing in a different manner than our recent ancestors.
The Internet
The main idea of this article is about how the internet is
benefitting humanity today. The article
compares television and the internet and the ways we use them. It also discusses how in helps people engage
more into what we’re seeking out and learning.
I liked the example of how when people want to get the news or sports
scores, they don’t buy a record, they turn on tv. And now, people are able to use the internet
at home to get these things “on demand”.
I believe the argument is supported and that it is also true that people
continue to learn by using the web or internet as opposed to the
television. For example, let’s say I want
to know the news right now. I can’t
watch it at 6:00 because I’m going to be making dinner for my kids. But at 4:47, I can google the news, watch and
article about the latest on Obama-care, see if the Mets won, and cue up a
station on Pandora to listen to while cooking for my kids. Did I get what I could’ve if I waited? Yes!
But more importantly, I had to navigate to the pages I was looking for to find
the news, go to another page for the sports, and then, after downloading and figuring
out how to use the interface on Pandora without written instructions, I got to
listen to music via the internet. This
took learning! Learning how to use
google, learning how to use yahoo sports, and learning how to use Pandora. Finally, the article makes a weak attempt to
blow a hole in the internet in the social aspect by saying that social websites
on the web can take away the face to face that humans crave, however, that
argument is quickly dismissed with the rebuttal that for the past few decades,
people have been turning on the television and reclining into isolation with zero
interaction. At least now, we are
interacting with people again, albeit, digitally. Times they are a changing.
Learning to think in a Digital World
What the authors main concern is in this article is the
effects of technology on reading and literature. She makes a good case about how technology
can be a hazard in that it is (using the Socrates example), taking away the
motivation for our learners of today to examine and reflect on the “Why” of
something as it gets replaced with the digital era of say “googling” something and
getting immediate gratification. I like
the example that she gives about how immediate access to information via the
digital age will cause our current and future students to probe beyond the
information and acquire a deeper insight as the the why of it. A basic example I can think of is the TI-83
graphing calculator. When I took higher
level algebra classes, the lesson plans of the instructors were primarily
centered around how to navigate the calculator to come up with the correct
answer. What on earth did they do before
the graphing calculator was invented? I’m
guessing that the students really learned how to solve the equations using the
most basic math methods…paper and pencil.
Nowadays, we’re all just used to the fact that to figure out how to
solve that difficult math problem, a calculator is required. So I can see why
the author of this article is concerned.
I do agree with her concern however, when it comes to reading, we all
still have to know how to read to navigate the pages on the web because most of
the pages on the web have words on them.
Also, one word, Kindle!
