"Growing Up Digital" Reaction/Annotations

I recently read John Seely Brown's article "Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn."

The first question I asked myself after reading the editor's note was: "how do we hold students' attention?"

Through reading the article is came to the following semi answers:
1. students can multitask much better than we assume they can. our generation may not be able to recognize signs of learning in the "digital students" as easily as we can with colleagues/students our own age.
2. in order for "digital students" to learn we have to create curriculum tailored to their "ideal way of learning," which is through action (trial and error & storytelling).
3. attention spans are not the issue & length of attention span does not point to amount of intelligence in a student. instead the mission should be getting the knowledge into them through a medium they can (students) connect with/to.

The second question I asked myself after reading the editor's note was: "what is wrong with the techniques I grew up learning from and why can't 'digital students' learn from them?"

I took out these ideas from my reading of the article in response:
1. if we depend on older models of teaching only certain students will be able to imbibe. [Thinking back to my own education, not all teachers were equally affective in my education. This points out to me that I connected with certain teaching styles more than others and reinforces the idea in the article that teaching styles have to morph to fit the needs of students, not the other way around.]
2. technology could allow us to combine different teaching techniques that would allow us to touch more students.
3. in order to grow as a society we need to challenge the beliefs of the past instead of embracing them, or taking the knowledge for granted (aka we need a revolution).
4. i come from a lecture-based background whereas "digital students" come from a "discovery based" background. Today's students learn through action and being lectured at is a passive activity.

One random idea I got from this article was that we as a society really need to examine our ideas about proper etiquette. Because kids are able to "multi process," they show respect for others in ways different than we do. We assume kids are not paying attention to us (therefore disrespecting us) because our understandings of body language is semi outdated. I got this from page 5 where Brown is telling about a boy who had programmed his glasses and could browse the web while carrying on a conversation with him. Furthermore, Brown states: "People my age tend to think that kids who are multiprocessing can't be concentrating." Because I would assume this young man is not able to pay attention to both the web and me, I would feel that he is being disrespectful to me with his apparent lack of attention.

Instead of seeing them as ADHD, crazy, irresponsible (which I did not think, but know that others do); if we consider that learning has different faces and admit that our way of learning does not apply to kids anymore, we can move forward and take part in the very social environment of learning. This article really affected my views on kids today. I see them as being very brave and I see their willingness/"tendency" towards action as a positive characteristic that we need in grown ups today. If Seattle politicians weren't so afraid to try new things/new ideas we probably would not have the viaduct anymore. We would probably have something totally different than a costly tunnel. We would have something that does not fit in the box that we keep ourselves enclosed in (so safe, yet so confining).

Why do we view tacit learning as being lower than elicit learning? I think it might have something to do with the structure of our society. Jobs that involve a lot of action (construction, farming, the work of garbage men...) get little pay and little respect, whereas jobs that involve minimal action (office jobs) get more pay. It is just as important (if not more) that the garbage man comes to pick up the garbage and dispose of it as it is that the ceo of company B makes a speech to the shareholders that brings stocks up 5%. Without the garbage man we would all live in filth. Without the ceo's speech the stock wouldn't have gone up 5%.

Something repeated several ideas in this article was the idea that shared learning involves a large effort by a few people combined with the small efforts of a lot. Through the web we are making connections to all sorts of people with different wells of knowledge. We can tap into these wells (where experts have given their own knowledge), drink and then pass on the water to someone else. We can also create wells of our own, if we are knowledgeable in certain areas and continue the process of shared learning.

For me this article emphasized an importance in expanding and enriching our communities.
If you would like to read this article please go to: http://usdla.org/html/journal/FEB02_Issue/article01.html