Week 8: Articles (PART ONE)

Week 8: Article 1
"Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach."

This article was published in 2001 so fairly soon after the birth of the concepts of digital natives and digital immigrants, which means that research into the phenomenons was still quite basic.
The article seems to make the assumption that digital immigrants in teaching positions are unwilling to adapt their teaching-style to fit with, what he calls, students that are fundamentally different from students in the past. It's all a bit generalising, I feel. Also, as I don't think these new forms of education people are particularly suitable for all sciences. Yes, on a lot of courses new media should be embrassed and actively used, but on some it would not add anything new or enable teahers to get their point accross to students any better. There's also quite a few points made that I do agree with, like how things like changes brought to people's sense of ethics, politics, sociology, languages and other things by the phenomenon, but surely it's hard to determine where these changes are going as I personally feel they are still developing all the time. (If they will ever settle at all)

Article 2:
This article from 2004 lays out how digital natives are different from digital immigrants, and actually going point to point whilst doing so. A nice overview of the digital native/digital immigrant phenomenons and actually uses some practical example making the concepts easy to grasp. However, what this article DOES do is (quite shamelessly) categorising the digital native as "the other", therefore the article gives a very one-sided view.

"In a very short time technology has changed an entire generation’s behavior radically..."
A bit of a bold statement to make, I'd think. The way things are done, the day-to-day practises, if you like, have changed, yes. But I don't think the essence of the interactions has changed in every single category. Yes, people's attitudes to "ownership" and "collecting" have changed (I would think), but I can't say I agree with every single TOTAL trunaround that the writer makes out. I believe that in many cases new social practises have come to exist ALONGSIDE existing ones rather than replacing them completely.

Article 3
Article 3, from 2005, also tends to have a view of digital natives as "the other". An interesting link that article makes is that study on child developments show that the brain's ability to effectively self-organize competing information keeps developping until the age of 16/17, and that therefore digital natives will always be able to multitask better than their parents. But abilities like that differ from person to person. I know people myself who, despite being too old to have been 16/17 by the time the "digital revolution" took place who are able to multitask and use new media forms as good as most digital natives, although I'll admit they are the minority. Then again, I know people who are 20, who find it quite hard to keep up with "the latest technology" and prefer to call rather than text, and go to a record store rather than iTunes. So, maybe the whole notion of 'how new media-savvy' you are is not solely a case of age-group, but more to do with other factors aswel. It is similar to article 1, how it descibes a difference between educators who are digital immigrants and students being digital natives and the problems in communications this causes. The same old generalisation there then and therefore a lot of the critism I have on that article applies to this one and vice-versa.

Article 4
A controversial statement in this piece from 2003, it is claimed that playing action video games enhances a student's visual selective attention. But surely, so would driving and things like that then, wouldn't they? Any practice in reaction-speed and "looking out for stuff" should enhance these kind of skills, surely? So I think he's pretty much stating the obvious here, just served with extra hi-tech chips. (I do like my vague metaphores, sorry!) It is continued that "videogames aren't the enemy but the best opportunity to engage our kids in real learning". Again, practical ways of learning, or learning celeverly disguised as playing is not exactly a new thing either. I would agree that the changed past-time activities of digital natives should be taken into account, so "playing for learning" could indeed be combined with things like computer games, but it's just an evolution of this "tried -and-tested" practise, rather than a brand new thing, as the writer seems to want to put across. The article is clearly a bit dated, as things like the Nintendo DS and even the Nintendo Wii have both embedded education into many of the games they offer.

The writer of the article is credited as working for Games2Train, which means t5hat the author's views are hardly going to be unbiased, considering the company or institution's name.

Article 5
Aaaaaaargh, another article pretty much stating a similar thing about education. It is really hard to find academic articles about other parts of the phenomenon that this one. The article suggests that educational institutions should co-operate with the students more to solve "the problem", and I think there's a point there, even if it might blur the boundary between the teachers and the students a bit. I personally think that this whole digital divide between students and teachers is a temporary one anyway. Change will probably come when the generation who are students now become the teachers, bringing their own ideas of social activity to the teaching staff-meeting of the future (so to speak). Ofcourse people want to make sure these younger people are addressed in a way that engages, relates to and motives them, but I have never heard of fellow students who feel that lecturers REALLY should get a special MSN-account that students can use to ask them questions. Yes, students would probably use it if teachers DID have them, but most are quite happy to e-mail or meet them in real life instead. Simply because "it's the way it is". For now, anyway.