Comments on: Listen/Speak Web

By: Ruminate » Blog Archive » Itunes U and EDU

Ruminate » Blog Archive » Itunes U and EDU — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 02:47:48 +0000

[...] Alan Levine here and here [...]

By: Gardner Writes » Blog Archive » A Deficit of Joy

Gardner Writes » Blog Archive » A Deficit of Joy — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 13:56:29 +0000

[...] Podcasts a part of the read/write Web? You bet they are. But that’s an argument for another post. [...]

By: Gardner

Gardner — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 11:55:57 +0000

Postscript on Bryan’s question and ensuing discussion: I think the categories of “transmission” and “interaction” are just as potentially mischievous as those of “digital native” and “digital immigrant.” I’ll be blogging on this soon. Yes, podcasts can become shovelware, dumping lectures into RSS feeds, but abuse shouldn’t define the category or limit imaginations. More soon–you have been warned. (woof!)

By: Gardner

Gardner — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 11:52:28 +0000

I like the term “digital citizens.” Whatever our origins, and no matter how thick our “accents,” we are in this brave new world together and we need to help contruct processes and opportunities that are fair and fairly delivered. Unfortunately, I still have colleagues, esp. on the admin. side, who believe they’re at home and having a very bad dream about all this IT stuff. They keep trying to wake up, and wake me up, but all the yelling in the world can’t disguise the fact that they’re simply drifting deeper into slumber.

One other thing to note: senior citizens are among the most active digital citizens of all when it comes to e-mail, lists, and other basic but vital digital activities.

By: Leon Cych

Leon Cych — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 09:22:29 +0000

This report from PISA seesm quite timely then :

http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/28/4/35995145.pdf

By: Nick Noakes

Nick Noakes — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 01:12:05 +0000

Thanks all three of you for coming back .. it is really helping me thilnk this through a bit more. Alan’s story of the teacher’s experience, has reminded me of how different our student populations are, or at least appear to be. The questions about student learning practices around technologies would be an interesting insitutiional study, Thanks foilks.

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 16:01:54 +0000

Nick- The “pure” Native must be considered something like an Archetype, not a characterization of an entire population. The pitfalls of the Premsky mantra is slipping into that assumption- and while I think he recognizes it. So to some degree, we are all on a sepcturm of immigrant to nativeness, and moving one way or another all the time.

Like Leon, we base a lot of it what we see in our own home laboratories, the in house teen. Again useful, illuminating, but dangerous to extrapolate.

I cannot speak for our system, and since we have no census data of student technology native statsus, it’s specualtive based on observation. We see that many (not all) carry cell phones. Many (not all) have several email accounts.

On the other hand, one faculty colleague who has taught with technology, online and hybrid, for 20+ years, reported a surprising situation last year, where in one of her sections she had a complete class full of total immigrants, and extremely patriotic ones at that. She struggled most of the year to have her students use the technology for what she had in mind, yet was still ahving to cover the basics of computer use we’d like to think is there.

I would say rather than looking at specific technologies they use/don;t use, its more approriate to look at *how* they use and how they learn something new. Do they wait for the yellow Dummies guide? Do they require a manual? Do they yell and scream when repsented a new interface, or do they explore, try to intuit? Do they work alone? Do they depend primariy on the teacher for guidance or do they use peers?

And frankly, it will always be a moving target. Someday, this generation we call “natives” will be over-run by the next generation who think their parents/teachers who are so “clueless”.

By: D'Arcy Norman

D'Arcy Norman — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 15:24:31 +0000

Students here seem to cover the whole spectrum - there isn’t a single description of “nativeness” that would apply to all 35,000 of them… I’ve seen students (apparently recent high school grads) struggle with basic web browser skills. I’ve seen older students who live and breathe digital media and html. And everything in between.

There are outlayers - I’d guess the Notepad hacker was one - but by and large students still seem to “view” the web. Maybe they’re getting ready to leapfrog it? Who knows. But when they’re shown various ways that they can publish effectively, lightbulbs go off.

By: Leon Cych

Leon Cych — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 10:18:08 +0000

Really can’t comment for the whole of UK but from my 12 year old son’s perspective.

We have a monitoring piece of software at our school called RM Tutor which lets the the teacher see what you are doing and where you’ve been - someone has already hacked into that using notepad…

By: Nick Noakes

Nick Noakes — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 09:54:07 +0000

Points taken D’Arcy … maybe I was getting a bit carried away ,.. I feel like I”m in a fog and not really grasping where they are coming from. And you’re right my use of the didgital natives / immigrants dichotomy is not helpful. I guess I’m thinking more along the lines of mindset than use (although obviously the two are connected) and where that might be taking us.

So how would you characterize undergrads in Calgary/Canada in this digital aspect? Alan, what about where you are? Leon, what about the UK?

The undergrads here are NOT digital natives in terms of tech use. They do use IM, phones, sms/text msging, photosharing (not nec flickr) a lot .. and of course Google (but are not skilled with info eval). But it’s peaks and troughs - most still come with little experience of basic office type apps (but that is changing greatly here with the students currently in late primary going in to seondary i.e 10-13 yrs old). I’m more stuck by attitude towards these; both their confidence in playing around with things and in their perception as seeing them as the C in ICT .. a way to deepen connections with peers and find new peers.