I’ve spent some time reading through some of the blogs from my GoogleReader, just blog cruising the past few days. Several things have caught my attention. First, there isn’t too much that is really new in a good portion of the high frequency blogs. Like Graham Wegner states in his blog entry relevant and original :
Quite often I read about an idea and then that theme seems to propagate itself in a multitude of blogs. For instance, More Prensky’s concept of digital immigrants and nativesis currently doing the rounds. My problem ? The majority of what’s being written I’ve read versions of before with very few bloggers currently breaking new ground on this well worn topic.
Now, if you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I’m not fond of this whole concept of natives and immigrants. Just recently I’ve read Prensky’s latest article Engage Me or Engrage Me. on Scott McLeod’s Dangerously Irrelevant where he introduces the topic and the discussions going on via two blogs: Chris Lehmann’s and Dennis Fermoyle’s. Both of these blogs do have some good conversations taking place. Although I agree with Chris that
… our schools do need to do a better job of engaging our students. I think we do have to find ways to integrate new tools into how we teach, and I (clearly) think that the technological tools we use outside of school need to find their way inside of schools as well. I even think that there are moments with simulations and games can play a major role in what we do in our classrooms.
I think the slam dunk in the article is
But I’m going to also say that we also have to teach gumption. We also have to teach kids how to slog through things even when they aren’t fun. And we have to teach kids what it means to see something through, and we have to teach kids that some values are not immediately fun, but are worth it long term. I used to say to my English classes, “Hey, on a warm spring day, I’d rather be outside playing Ultimate frisbee than teaching English, but we all have to be here, so let’s find a way to make it meaningful.” The flaw in Prensky’s article is that there is a difference between recreation and work.(my stress)
This is something that we seem to be forgetting in the discussion of the new technologies. Even when it is brought up, those who are proponents seem to say “Yeah, yeah. We’ll do that but what about ___________” (fill in blank with whatever tool or key phrase is hot.) We seem to be confusing “fun” with “life skills”. The more I read, the more I wonder when we decided to let the children and students decide what would be taught, how it would be taught and what was important to know.
As I progressed through life, each time I hit that ultimate next life stage, I thought “Right on, now I’ve arrived, I’ve worked hard, learned and I’m a capable person. Now someone will listen to me.” Well, I’m still waiting. Not that people don’t listen but I’m realizing that I know less and less about this cycle we call life and all of a sudden someone is saying that we can just disregard the life lessons and learning that goes on from struggle through difficult and mundane tasks. We’ll just make it all wonderful with wowing technology and they’ll learn so much more than through the mundane tasks but you don’t understand because you’re not like them so just nod and move aside. Did I miss something? How can we continue to tell kids that life is like a video game - simulation or whatever. It isn’t. Life is so much more messy, uncertain and chaotic. And when you die, you don’t get any more chances. But if you just want one drama after another - that’s what soaps are for. Really. Or the half-hour sitcoms.
I could continue on this vain but, really, will it make a difference. The lines are being drawn as we move into this uncertain and chaotic period of education. Will children suffer irraparable damage if they don’t get a whole menagerie of technological experiences? No. Despite what everyone seems to think, children will continue to be children. And last time I checked, the teenage years were always difficult and chaotic times. Questioning the authoraties of the time, pushing the lines and wanting freedom but scared to really take it. Escaping into __________ (fill in the blank with some kind of diversion) has been a way that teens have dealt with things. Are the diversions different and allowing students to soialize in a whole new way. Yep. But they’re still diversions and some kids use the web, some read, some write, some do sports and some, unfortunately fall into using drugs and alcohol. Will there be other diversions for the next set of teens? Yes. Will we have to accommodate them? Of course.
Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t think schools can continue to limp along as they are doing and we need to do some serious changing but let’s not lose sight of the fact that schools are around, really, for one reason. We need to send the children somewhere while people work. Before school, factories, mines and fields were the places of choice unless you were from a rich family then you were usually home schooled or, if you were a rebel and snuck out at night to ride your horse around, you were sent overseas to some monestary or some religious excursion. Then society decided that this wasn’t good, having children working in factories and such so it was made illegal to use children to work in the fields, mines and factories. What to do with them? We came up with schools. Yes, universal education allowed for people to move up the social ladder and achieve things they couldn’t before as it does now. Maybe school has outlasted its usefullness and we need to do something different. But right now, the best option we have is schools and the best understanding we have is to create an environment that, at some point, will challenge most of the students. The posts on the blogs I mentioned earlier are worth the read in this regard.
Now, unless I feel a real urge, this will be my last post on Prensky as I believe that this just creates more advertising. I would like to explore that idea of a digital intelligence as I believe that this has more weight than some of the other things I’ve heard. More on that later. I do so enjoy the dialogue and discussion. That’s why I blog!
Kelly
8 responses so far ↓
I notice you don’t publish full feeds, is that on purpose? I almost missed this post!
Kelly, congrats. You inspired me to write what may be my longest post ever:
http://tinyurl.com/34nwb7
=) SCOTT
My fear is that we justify out of date and irrelevant work as the key components to “teaching gumption”. If we begin with the end in mind, that is, provide relevant and purposeful learning, it will by its nature include engagement and gumption, for even in the midst of engaging learning, there will be the need to do the “dirty work” or less exciting work. Having said that, it always becomes a matter of perspective.
After riding the cable cars in San Francisco this weekend, I was amazed at the joy and enthusiasm of the drivers. One man kept saying, “I love my job!”. Partly because you could tell he was enjoying interacting with the riders but certainly his job requires gumption and is highly monotonous. He just didn’t see it that way.
I don’ t think we’ll be able to convince all kids to adopt this attitude but certainly we’ll have fewer problems if we continue to strive to incorporate a greater variety of instructional strategies but equally as important, extract those portions of the curriculum that are most relevant. We are fortunate in Saskatchewan to have a certain degree of autonomy that we can make some of these decision at the classroom level.
Chris, Dean and Scott, Thanks for the comments. Chris, no, there is no reason. I’ll check my options. Dean and Scott, I certainly think that the conversation has merit. I know that I am constantly learning and this is the type of conversation that pushes me to stretch. I’m at the point of creating another post in response to more of what I have been reading.
Kelly
I’m throwing in two cents late in the conversation here, but I mentioned in a post on Dangerously Irrelevant that I changed my thinking after reading some results from a study at the Pew Internet Project.
Some of the takeaways for me about video games, that I hadn’t thought about(not being much of a gamer) are that : players receive rewards for achieving a level and can advance to the “next level” when they complete something. They put in the amount of work it takes to advance, and then they want to move up.
I was thinking aside from the “entertainment” and engagement discussion–do we let students “move up” a level when they complete or master things, or are we holding them in place until the rest of the class gets to the “next level” also. And if we are, isn’t that doing them a disservice? And in our classrooms, no matter how engaging, instead of rewarding them for having “completed the level,” are we asking them to wait until everyone else completes the level also?
Now, I would say that in a video game, when kids play together and are waiting on another player to “finish”, they are learning because they are watching or helping or coaching, generally, though sometimes they are just bored, while waiting. But are our students helping or coaching others, or just waiting?
I was reading about the Charlotte Mecklenberg public library which has an avatar character on Second Life (article in SLJ)–I may be blurry on the details, but I don’t necessarily think as a librarian I need to be an avatar to engage students. But I do think this technology that our students use daily has something to say to us in schools(and school libraries) about how students today are learning and will continue to learn.
I had this same sort of debate in my school over note cards for documenting research. I feel we should be teaching students to highlight print outs, or use sites like del.icio.us or Google Notebook, or a myriad of other electronic note taking strategies rather than teach them to use note cards with the exact note card format, because I think those are the methods they will naturally be employing, and we should give them the best tools for managing their process. I do think many(most) teachers have moved away from that strategy.
Anyway, my point here is that we need to teach students strategies that will fit into their ‘real lives’ if they are going to really be life long learners. And maybe from video games, iPod use, text messaging, etc…we can take larger lessons of how they are used into the schools and think about what they teach us about our students.
Thanks for the fascinating back and forth discussion!
[...] There has been a wonderful discussion going on in relation to the Prensky article “Engage Me or Enrage Me”. Now, I’ve spent a few days refiing my thought on this blog. The comments have been spectacular and I’ve grown to know a few of you even more (Thanks for dedicated entry Scott ) Now, I’ve been preparing a rather lengthy discussion and then I read Dean Shareski’s tag article where he comments on posting length. So, with that in mind, off we go…. [...]
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[...] anyone who has read my writing over the past few months knows that I do not agree with this whole idea on several levels. I don’t think that putting people on sides and then [...]
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