I heard about Marc Prensky's contentious assertion that the current generation of learners have functionally different brains because of their total immersion in all things conceivably digital.
This was last year during a conference on IT and Learning.
Since then I've had reason to stop and reflect on this hypothesis. Basically I don't agree and I'm not alone.
Kids can do the following with the web and technology based activities: P0rn, Facebook and Games - PFG. That's about it.
Although not very scientifically sound, my arrival at this observation is based upon the fact that outside these three things, kids have no idea how all the pipes and tubes hang together or how the bits get from one place to another. They don't care. They seemingly don't possess some innate sense of the digital or connected that Prensky refers to. If it doesn't involve them obtaining some prurient pleasure or social gratification then they don't want to know. They are blissfully unaware of how the HTTP protocol works, what TCP/IP is or how to even spell HTML.
We introduced a new web based sports choice mechanism for our school this semester. Up until now we used a quaint system whereby students would take a note home to their parents to get approval for a sport that could cost money. If the approval wasn't given, the student would have to pick another sport - again by making a selection on a slip of paper which would need to be collected, collated, compiled and the sports rolls configured. All in all it occupied 2 teachers the better part of a day or longer.
I wrote a simple PHP and MySql web application that allowed the students to pick from a list of sports and as the selections for the sport filled up, the sport was unavailable for further selection.
At the end of the process we had rolls completed, an automated email sent to parents notifying them of their offspring's choice of activity and the cost, and a list sent to the bursar so she could send invoices to the parents. All done within one or two pastoral periods to cover about 160 kids.
The trouble is that we assumed that the kids would know how to register, login and make the selection. The interface is a pretty familiar design pattern not unlike Facebook's registration process. Enter a username, think up a password then login. Kids would dutifully enter the details then between the registration process and logging in (a time gap of about 5 seconds) they would forget what password they had used. No freaking idea. Not all of them, but a few. They'd sit and stare at the screen while the cursor forlornly blinked in the password entry field and ask the teacher what their password was. These are the digital natives of which Marc Prensky speaks.
Another example.
I teach Information and Software Technology to year 9. I asked a few of them to have a play with CodeAcademy.com.
These guys have simplified the basics of programming instruction. You read what they have to say, type into the box what they ask you to do then you watch the web based "command prompt" run your commands.
One of the kids was entering html when the instructions explicitly told him to enter javascript. Sheesh.
Last year I saw a year 10 boy scribble the dates of his upcoming assessment tasks on the back of his hand. I asked him if he had an iPod and if so, why wasn't he using the built in organiser facilities? He looked a bit stunned then realised what a great idea this was. Digital native. Indeed.
