Reading Assignment 3

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!