Help! My digital natives are broken!

As part of my normal teaching, I always get my new first year students to write down answers to a few questions during the first lecture. This year one of the questions asked them to describe or define ‘Wiki’. It helps to know at the start how much the students know.
Half the class left that one blank.

Half of the students (all registered for a degree in Game Development, Computer Science, IT or closely related course) were unable to give an answer to describe what a Wiki is.

On top of that, half of the answers that were given referred to a Wiki as some form of online dictionary or encyclopedia - without mention of the ability of users to change the content. Without the ability to mind-read it isnt possible for me to tell whether they are aware that users can change the content of Wiki’s, but it does appear that they do tend to think of them as a read-only resource.

Either my digital natives are broken, or the impression Prensky gives us of the digital native is simply wrong. But it appears that I’m not the only one working with college students who are less native than their ‘ageing’ lecturer. This quote says it all:

40% of my students in this class, while liking the subject matter, have not liked going out on the internet.

Old fashioned literacy

Some UK literacy stats to be found here.

Amongst the stats…

• One study (ONS Omnibus survey) found that in the 12 months to June 2002 a quarter of adults had not read a book, including almost half of males aged between 16 and 24.
• A 2003 survery of 9 and 11-year-olds found children enjoyed reading less than pupils of the same age in 1998, with a particular decline in interest in reading for pleasure among boys.
• In 2003, a survey (National Foundation for Educational Research, 2003) of nine and 11-year-olds found that, compared with pupils of the same age in 1998, children were more confident readers, but enjoyed it less. Boys in particular showed a decline in interest in reading for pleasure.
• In the same year the Nestle Family Monitor surveyed 11 to 18 year olds and 70% agreed that reading books helped them to become better writers.

What is of interest here - and what should be of interest to educators and parents - is that children still do read for pleasure, but the proportion that do appears to be declining. Amongst the male population this decline is particularly marked - to the extent that by the time they reach 16 it seems that half of all males stop reading books!

Why is this important? Collateral learning again. In reading a book, whatever else you learn, you learn how to read books. As you read more, you become better at reading books. You also - as many children recognise - become better at writing. Like many university lecturers I am often concerned at the weak ability many students have to express themselves in writing - a skill that will remain important as digital media continues its inevitable growth.

And even when every book in the world is available online and free, you’ll still have to be literate to be able to  access and understand it.

The myth of the digital native

Just came across this…

From 2004. Martin Owen, the director of the UK’s FutureLab has a short piece on the myth of the digital native. It’s something I’m going to write more about later, so I’m glad that someone agrees with me - and even more glad that he hasn’t used up all my arguments yet!

He does however make one point that my wife also picked up on: If people assume that what Prensky states about digital natives to be true - and it turns out to be false - then they might end up delivering teaching that is less well suited to their students than they believe to be the case.

And for anyone wondering why my wife might be so interested in this topic… she’s an award winning web producer for BBC Scotland, working on schools and education projects. It’s her job too.

Pay attention now!

A nice little summary of some of Prensky’s writing is to be found on the online Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. It includes the joke that Prensky makes about ADD. This is part of the ‘Engage me or Enrage me’ theme he presents. Basically, he claims, the problem is not that ‘kids’ have problems with attention, its just that they don’t want to - or that this is only a problem for the old-fashioned methods of teaching. Kids are so used to operating at ‘Twitch Speed’ that anything less just doesn’t cut it.

Well what if it turned out there were ways of improving childrens attention at school without any need to convert the curriculum into a series of digital games? If instead of pandering to the need for constant visual stimulation, it were possible to help children learn the discipline required for concentrating, listening and thinking without flashy graphics? It appears that there may be one fairly simple solution that can lead to dramatic improvements: it’s called food.

I wrote too soon…

Just the other day I wrote about the challenge of effectively teaching abstract subjects such as philosophy using electronic media. Little did I know that Marc Prensky had solved this challenge in one of his seminal papers (I’m really just catching up on all of this).

When I say seminal, it is in fact one of the papers he describes as ‘The Classics’ on his own webpage - “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants– A New Way To Look At Ourselves and Our Kids“. There, on page 6, one can find his ingenious solution:

In my talks I invite professors and teachers to suggest a subject or topic, and I attempt - on the spot - to invent a game of other Digital Native method for learning it. Classical philosophy? Create a game in which the philosophers debate and the learners have to pick out what each would say.

Doll houses and domestic management

My wife pointed out this article from the Telegraph. Has some positive things to say about computer games - though not completely at odds with the more recent ‘letter to the Telegraph’.

Elaine is untroubled, pointing out Bethany has plenty of other interests, too. She’s supported by various research projects, which show that children who combine computer game playing with other activities are likely to be more popular and sporty than children who never play.

Certainly, The Sims stimulates the imagination in a way sitting in front of a Shrek DVD never could.

The caveat here is quite an important one - computer games are/can be positive where they are combined with other activities.

Another one for later…

Several gurus of games based learning in conversation. Guess I’ll have to come back to this when I get the time.

No significant difference

For reference:

No Significant Difference Phenomenon

“This website has been designed to serve as a companion piece to Thomas L. Russell’s book, “The No Significant Difference Phenomenon” (2001, IDECC, fifth edition). Mr. Russell’s book is a fully indexed, comprehensive research bibliography of 355 research reports, summaries and papers that document no significant differences (NSD) in student outcomes between alternate modes of education delivery, with a foreword by Dr. Richard E. Clark.”

Amused to death

Well, finished reading Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. I’m aware that both Marc Prensky and Steve Johnson have read it, though as far as I can see neither really addresses its main points. A few ideas are flying around my head just now, I’ll try and set them down with some semblance of order.

A very core point is that digital visual media present the world in a very different way from type.

“Television’s strongest point is that it brings personalities into our hearts, not abstractions into our heads.” (p. 123)

“Arguments, hypotheses, discussions, reasons, refutations or any of the traditional instruments of reasoned discourse turn television into radio or, worse, third-rate printed matter. Thus, television-teaching always takes the form of story-telling…” (p. 14

With television, or graphical games, how can we teach philosophy or spirituality? Or are these subjects to be considered unsuitable for the 21st Century? It is not that games or television cannot or do not have content about philosophy or spirituality, but these mediums are simply not suited to dealing with abstractions. Instead, we might expect programmes centred on the lives and characters of preachers, philosophers or scientists, rather than their abstract notions (’Longitude’ is only one of many programmes that comes to mind here). If it can’t be shown easily in an image flashed on screen, it doesn’t work well in a visual medium.

Spare Time

Watched an entertaining television essay by Grayson Perry on Channel 4. Grayson writes a little about it here.

The hobbies most beneficial … are communal, involve learning specialist skills and contribute to one’s sense of identity. Most of these pursuits have declined in popularity; we now seem to prefer leisure activities that are solitary, undemanding and expensive.

Somewhat unexpectadly he was not down on computer games - as long as they meet the criteria above. In particular he went to a major lan-party event, and chatted to a clan who had only just met for the first time in real life. Interesting to see an attempt to define what is a real hobby - compare against the undefined meaning of real play in the recent letter to the telegraph.