'In Class, I have to power down'

'In Class, I have to power down' (view Guardian article here.)

Indeed, many of today's primary school children will have had a lot more experience with ICT than that which they will come across in school. Spreadsheets, databases and word documents prompt yawns and a rolling of the eyes from these such children. I admit, they know far more than I do about what is out there in the world of Information and Communication Technology, so why do we not credit this and give way for them to develop and expand within school. If they were musically talented their skills and talent would most likely be nurtured and built upon by a school or outside agency. So why is ICT so limited?

I could speculate for hours about what makes us, as teachers, react in such a way to ICT. I stifled laughter as a teacher told me that the classes first ICT lesson on the half term would not be in the ICT suite. 'They are learning this today, and then they can put it onto the computer next week'. I hope the teacher does not notice my raised eyebrows in response to what I have heard. In school, children have to 'power down':

What I do with digital technology outside school - at home, in my own free time - is on a completely different level to what I'm able to do at school. Outside school, I'm using much more advanced skills, doing many more interesting things, operating in a far more sophisticated way. School takes little notice of this and seems not to care.

One child explains how ICT lessons only get exciting when you leave the classroom and take what you have back to your own computer:

At school, you do all this boring stuff, really basic stuff, PowerPoint and spreadsheets and things. It only gets interesting and exciting when you come home and really use your computer. You're free, you're in control, it's your own world.

Both quotes taken from 'In class, I have to power down' by David Puttnam at guardian.co.uk, Tuesday May 8 2007.

The question then, how do we make ICT interesting and exciting within school? There are limitations, it seems, in the amount of freedom and control you can give a class of children in an ICT lesson. There are plans to keep to and things to be learnt, in theory anyway. What is often forgotten, I think, is how much ICT can filter into other areas of the curriculum in interesting and exciting ways. Google Earth, podcasts, blogs and Wikis can all feature in ICT, however they would be of much more use in geography, literacy and science etc. as an enrichment to the curriculum. ICT needs to be taken from the ICT suite and filtered into other areas of education. It will be of much more value to children when they use it in an appropriate context. Then perhaps they may get interesting and exciting.

Marc Prensky and the Digital Natives Part II

Part II 'Are They Really Thinking Differently?' (click to view here).

Critical Summary

Prensky explains findings in recent research that the brain is constantly reorganised. It never loses its plasticity, and it changes and reorganises itself differently based upon the input it receives. This has implications for the above theory. Natives and Immigrants not only think about things differently, they actually think differently. Their thinking is determined by what they have experienced, and this will be hugely different for Digital Immigrants and Digital natives. He explains that ‘Children raised with the computer ―think differently from the rest of us’. He suggests then that Immigrants must accept the fact they have entered into an unfamiliar world, and must adapt in order to achieve effective teaching and learning.

Prensky presents extensive evidence in support that games can help develop learning in a way that will help the brain reorganise itself and therefore retain the information put in. For the brain to reorganise itself it needs a consistent flow of information over a sustained period of time, Prensky suggests ‘several hours a day, five days a week, sharply focused attention’, which is reminiscent of the time a child invests in a video game. Prensky is by no means suggesting that children play mindless video games all day to achieve more effective learning, but to use this as a basis for practicing effective learning.

In view of this evidence Prensky proposes that Digital Immigrants must learn to reorganise their own minds. In such a way as people did for reading, for television and now for digital technologies. It seems a fair call that those who are technophobes should not be teaching in a way that seems completely alien to those who are learning. The learners are the future and so should not be dragged back into an old system, just because the teachers are afraid of the new digital technologies. Prensky’s evidence suggests that in fact digital technology enhances learning, and it should therefore be forwarded, not pushed to the back of the line.

Marc Prensky and the Digital Natives

A short critical response to Marc Prensky's article 'Digital Natives Digital Immigrants'.


Part I 'Digital Natives Digital Immigrants' (click to view article here).

Critical Summary

Prensky proposes that there is a mark in the change in which today’s students think, and therefore the way these students learn, ‘Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.’ He suggests that those responsible for these students’ learning (teachers, lecturers etc.) do not think in this same way. This creates a void in the space in which teaching learners communicate knowledge, and therefore that earning is not being communicated effectively. For this communication to become effective he proposes that someone needs to change (someone, either the Digital Native or the Digital Immigrant). Prensky suggests that since the Natives will not revert back to the older ways of teaching – they will not see the need – that this then the Immigrants who need to adapt. And why shouldn’t they, in the inherent native-immigrant analogy. The native world is the one in which we live, the immigrants are required to adapt in order to fit the native way.

Prensky’s proposition is very clear, and I do agree that there needs to be a shift in the direction of digital technologies in teaching. It is very hard however, to pigeon-hole people into the two categories – they are mutually exclusive in the analogy, but realistically this is not wholly true. Many lecturers and teachers are very able to work and communicate via technology, far better in fact than myself. They will have witnessed these technological developments, and the effect these developments have had. They will know the impact of technology far better than a native who has grown up alongside it. To them, it will either be a good or a bad development. Those who see the benefits of digital technologies are perhaps those who are far more digitally literate. Those that see digital progression as bad are those who cannot relate or adapt to today’s students. It is perhaps this opinion that needs challenging, correcting, and taking forward into an effective teaching practice that works both for the student and the teacher, or the Immigrant and the Native.