The Polychronic Student

Anthony Fontana writes about Polychronic and Monochronic approaches to learning in his blog, The Polychronic Classroom.

A post here outlines why this categorisation of students differs from the ‘Digital Native-Digital Immigrant’ methaphor. As a way of categorising students or workers, I agree with the commentator on the blog that the terms suffer from not being immediately transparent - its not totally obvious what the terms mean without a definition on hand. Positively, the terms do not carry so many connotations (students are not all lumped into the one category with teachers into the other) and the scale is a continuous rather than binary one - recognising that individuals are individuals.

Another positive aspect of the monochron/polychron view is that the differences are about ways of interacting with others and working practices rather than about differences in a ‘native’ understanding of technology.