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Today I had the privilege of listening to Hall Davidson, head of the Discovery Educator Network, speak on a topic entitled, “Revenge of the Digital Natives“.  He spoke of how the digital natives (children growing up with technology) have the ability to multi-task unlike any generation before them.  While the amount of time these students spend watching TV can increase their inability to attend, they can also multi-task with several different medias and expect to learn with several different medias. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Digital natives typically spend 2 seconds on a webpage before they decide whether or not the page will yield the information they are looking for.  What does this mean for teachers?  Think of the media you use in your class.  Mr. Davidson gave the example of how the old way to show an education video in schools was to play the whole 30 minute video.  Now with resources like United Streaming, teachers have the ability to download a short video segment that narrows in on their objective that they are teaching.  No more wasted classroom time! 

Mr. Davidson also shared some websites that can be used in a new way to engage students in the classroom:

• Google Lit Trips: Virtual field trips in Google Earth around famous works of literature
• Google Sketchup: Construct a 3D building
• Gcast: Call an online service, leave a message, and turn it into a podcast automatically
• Polleverywhere: Participate in a survey via your cell phone and results are displayed on the website live
• Jott: send yourself reminders via email by calling the Jott.com number

I have seen Mr. Davidson speak at the Day of Discovery in Silver Springs, MD back in August, and still find that he has new ideas to share with his audience.  I hope to continue to be as motivated and excited about technology as he is!

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MD, VA, DC Day of Discovery

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I had the pleasure of meeting David Warlick at Frederick County Public School’s Summer Leadership Symposium 2008. When I learned that Mr. Warlick was going to be at the Symposium, I was ecstatic since I had heard him speak at MICCA 2007 and found him to be quite engaging.

Mr. Warlick’s keynote presentation was entitled “Our Students, Our Worlds“. As a Teacher Specialist for Instructional Technology, I was excited to hear Mr. Warlick stress the importance of technology in the classroom. One of the facts that he brought to our attention was that “in 2002 five exabytes of new information was created, and only 0.01% of that information was found in PRINT form”. What does this mean? We need to teach our students to stop using paper and start using digital resources to locate information quickly, efficiently, and effectively. We need to “teach students to teach themselves.” We need to show them how to search the Internet effectively, how to distinguish credible resources from the ones that aren’t credible, and how to participate in the online community by sharing content.

I absolutely agree. The Maryland State Department of Education has adopted and passed technology standards for students that states that all students will be technology-literate by the 8th grade. The big debate is, “What makes a student technology literate?” I believe that the answer can be found in David Warlick’s presentation. As of spring of 2009, eight grade students across MD will be “measured” on their proficiency of the technology standards. It will be interesting to see what happens when the results of this measurement tool are released. Maybe this is what is needed to continue to generate attention for the need for technology in our county.

The second session I attended was called “Cultivating Your Personal Learning Network.” At the heart of his presentation was RSS (Really Simple Syndication). By utilizing RSS, you can subscribe to Internet content and have the updates come to you automatically in feed readers such as Google Reader or Bloglines. In addition, social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us or Diigo can be used to store all of your favorite websites online so you have access to them on any computer with an Internet connection. I personally started using del.icio.us after I heard Mr. Warlick speak at MICCA in 2007, and I don’t know how I ever lived without my del.icio.us account since I have started using it. Furthermore, Mr. Warlick spoke of the educational implications of using wikis, blogs, and web 2.0 tools such as Skype, Moodle, Voicethread, and Google Docs.

I only hope that the leaders of Frederick County heard Mr. Warlick’s message as strongly as I did and that we can continue to work towards making our children technology-literate, information-literate, and “Learning Literate” (as Mr. Warlick states).

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There is an interesting interview at ZDNet from Henry Jenkins, a media scholar at MIT, who is studying how digital environments influence children.  Here is one of the thought-provoking quotes:

“(Research has shown) that 57 percent of teens online have produced media and about a third of them have produced media that they shared with people beyond their immediate friends and families. A good chunk of those produced media by remixing it, so this is a generation that is not just consuming media, but producing media.” ~ Henry Jenkins

 This goes back to an earlier point that I made in a blog entry about the growing digital divide, not just between students, but between students AND teachers.  What percentage of teachers can boast that they have produced media and posted it to the Internet?  Created podcasts?  Blogs?  Incorporated any of these methods into the classroom? 

Students are using the Internet to find information and to publish information that they have created, whether it’s at MySpace, YouTube, or Facebook.  My sister, who was in 9th grade at the time, uploaded a video she created in school to YouTube.  Uploading to YouTube was not part of the class assignment, although her group decided to do it on their own time.

My point is this: students are creating and publishing to the web all the time.  How can educators take advantage of this in the classroom?  How can we teach students to ethically be responsible for the material they post to the Internet?  If kids are producing this kind of technology, how can we change the way we teach to motivate them further?

 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLpjrHzgSRM]

I have a sister who is a freshman in high school.  I’m amazed by how different her educational experience has been in comparison to mine.  She grew up with a computer in the home since the day she was born, and she has watched and learned from all of her brothers and sisters on the computer.  My sister, along with her friends, created the Skittles commercial in a high school class for a project.  She remarked that the software she used in class was not as good as iMovie (from her Mac) or Movie Maker (from my PC).  Even so, they edited the whole process easily since my sister had video editing experience from summer projects we worked on together the year before (we made music videos – a quick an fun way to learn Movie Maker).  I was impressed with how quickly she learns and picks up on new concepts related to the computer.  When I created digital pictures that were edited in Photoshop Elements for my class book, I showed her the new pictures that had the “special effects” added into them.  While she was impressed, she smiled and said, “Send these to me.  I can make them better”.  And she did!  How does she do this?  She isn’t afraid of the computer like older generations can be.  She sits at the computer and plays around with software until she teaches herself what she wants to know.  If students are doing this on their own, should we reconsider how we are teaching them in the classroom?  How can we continue to keep the technology updated so that students like my sister won’t be slowed down by what is available in their classes, but can soar with it?  All points that need to be considered.  Where is the Digital Divide really?  Is it between the “haves” and the “have nots”? I see a bigger Digital Divide between the digital learners in today’s classrooms and their teachers.  I heard a quote once that went something like this: “Technology won’t replace teachers.  But teachers who use technology will replace teachers who don’t.” 

I think this is absolutely true.

 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHWTLA8WecI]

I don’t know too many technology educators that haven’t seen Karl Fisch’s video on the impact of rapidly changing technology on our youth.  It is a six minute video created in PowerPoint that provides very thought-provoking questions on how we should address the needs of technology in the classroom so that children may be prepared for the future.  I find myself referencing it when I speak of technology in education with my peers, and believe that all schools should show this video to their staff to begin the conversation on where technology fits into an already busy schedule for their classroom.  If you haven’t seen the video yet, check it out.  )