Engaging Digital Natives

Slide 1: Engaging Digital Natives Examining 21st century literacies and their implications for teaching in the digital age. Jennifer Carrier Dorman http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/Conferences

Slide 2: http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/Conferences

Slide 3: We are at a turning point in the tech industry and perhaps even in the history of the world Tim O’Reilly – Feb. 14 2006

Slide 4: The Case for 21st Century Education Education is changing.  Competition is changing internationally.  The workplace, jobs, and skill demands are  changing.

Slide 6: Implications These changes, among others, are ushering us toward a world  where knowledge, power, and productive capability will be more dispersed than at any time in our history—a world where value creation will be fast, fluid, and persistently disruptive. A world where only the connected will survive.  A power shift is underway, and a tough new business rule is  emerging: Harness the new collaboration or perish. Those who fail to grasp this will find themselves ever more  isolated—cut off from the networks that are sharing, adapting, and updating knowledge to create value.

Slide 7: Implications for Schools For smart schools [companies], the rising tide of mass  collaboration offers vast opportunity…Schools [Companies] can reach beyond their walls to sow the seeds of innovation and harvest a bountiful crop. Indeed, educators [firms] that cultivate nimble, trust-based  relationships with external collaborators are positioned to form vibrant classroom [business] ecosystems that enhance learning [create value] more effectively than hierarchically organized schools [businesses]. (edits by Will Richardson, original words in brackets) 

Slide 8: Digital Natives

Slide 9: Digital Natives It is now clear that as a result of this  ubiquitous information environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. Marc Prensky – “Digital Natives, Digital  Immigrants” 2001

Slide 10: Digital Natives “Different kinds of experiences lead to  different brain structures” - Dr. Bruce D. Berry of Baylor College of Medicine. it is very likely that our students’ brains have  physically changed – and are different from ours – as a result of how they grew up

Slide 11: Who are the digital natives? Our students today are all “native speakers”  of the digital language of computers, video games, instantaneous communication, and the Internet. Those of us who were not born into the  digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are Digital Immigrants.

Slide 12: The Challenge Our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak  an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language

Slide 13: The Nomadic Grazing Patterns of Digital Natives Digital Natives are used to receiving  information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task.  They prefer their graphics before their text  rather than the opposite.

Slide 14: The Nomadic Grazing Patterns of Digital Natives They prefer random access (like hypertext).  They function best when networked.  They thrive on instant gratification and  frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work. 

Slide 15: Methodology Today’s teachers have to learn to communicate  in the language and style of their students. This doesn’t mean changing the meaning of what is  important, or of good thinking skills.

Slide 16: Web 2.0

Slide 17: What is Web 2.0? Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived  ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of static websites to a full- fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Tim O’Reilly 

Slide 18: Web 2.0 Static content transformed by dynamic  participation Communities  Networks  Read/write 

Slide 19: The New WWW Whatever  Whenever  Wherever  Tom March, Web-based educator, author, and  instructional designer

Slide 20: The New WWW The New WWW—offering us whatever we  want, whenever and wherever we want it— may seem like just an extension of our already-technology-enhanced contemporary life

Slide 21: Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture Media Education for the 21st Century

Slide 22: “If it were possible to define generally the  mission of education, it could be said that its fundamental purpose is to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, [Creative] and economic life.” — New London Group (2000, p. 9)

Slide 23: Participatory Culture According to a recent study from the Pew  Internet & American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden, 2005), more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one- third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced.

Slide 24: A Participatory Culture . . . With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic  engagement With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations  with others With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known  by the most experienced is passed along to novices Where members believe that their contributions matter  Where members feel some degree of social connection with one  another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created)

Slide 25: Forms of Participatory Culture Affiliations — memberships, formal and informal, in  online communities centered around various forms of media, such as Friendster, Facebook, message boards, metagaming, game clans, or MySpace Expressions — producing new creative forms, such as  digital sampling, skinning and modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups

Slide 26: Forms of Participatory Culture Collaborative Problem-solving — working together  in teams, formal and informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternative reality gaming, spoiling). Circulations — Shaping the flow of media (such as  podcasting, blogging).

Slide 27: Implications A growing body of scholarship suggests  potential benefits of these forms of participatory culture, including: opportunities for peer-to-peer learning,   a changed attitude toward intellectual property,  the diversification of cultural expression,  the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship.

Slide 28: Implications Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from  one of individual expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all involve social skills  developed through collaboration and networking. These skills build on the foundation of traditional  literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom.

Slide 29: The New Literacies Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s  surroundings as a form of problem-solving Performance — the ability to adopt alternative  identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct  dynamic models of real-world processes Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample  and remix media content

Slide 30: The New Literacies Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment  and shift focus as needed to salient details. Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact  meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool  knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and  credibility of different information sources

Slide 31: The New Literacies Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the  flow of stories and information across multiple modalities Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize,  and disseminate information Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse  communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

Slide 32: Blogs

Slide 33: Blogs A blog is a website for which an individual or a group  frequently generates text, photographs, video or audio files, and/or links, typically (but not always) on a daily basis. The term is a shortened form of weblog.  Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an  existing blog is called "blogging". Individual articles on a blog are called " blog posts," "posts," or  "entries". The person who posts these entries is called a " logger". b 

Slide 34: Why the sudden popularity of blogs? RSS - Really Simple Syndication 

Slide 35: RSS Aggregator – Bloglines

Slide 36: Blogs in School? Blogs are tools, and like any tools they can be  used or misused. Misuse occurs more often when there's a lack of  instruction. (MySpace, Xanga, Facebook) Interactivity, publishing, collective  intelligence

Slide 37: Blogs in School Teacher Blogs Student Blogs Homework This week in class, we...   Keep Parents in the Student Work   Loop Online portfolio  Virtual Inservice  Peer/teacher feedback  Professional  collaboration

Slide 38: Why Students Shouldn’t Blog People will read it.  People might not like it.  They might share test answers with others.  They might be found by a child predator online  They might write something inappropriate.  They might find something inappropriate.  They might get other students to start blogging.  http://blogging101.wikispaces.com/whywhynot

Slide 39: Why Students Should Blog People will read it.  They might like it.  They might share what they've learned with others.  They might participate in a collaborative learning project.  They might become inspired to learn.  They might inspire others to learn.  They might get other students to start blogging.  If they don't talk in class, they might on a blog.  http://blogging101.wikispaces.com/whywhynot

Slide 40: Daily Scribe

Slide 41: Classroom Extensions

Slide 42: Tips for Blogging http://blogging101.wikispaces.com/bloggersbeware

Slide 43: Blog Hosting for Schools Blogmeister - http://classblogmeister.com/  Edublogs - http://edublogs.org/ 

Slide 44: Podcasts

Slide 45: Podcasts iPod + Broadcast = Podcast  Amateur radio   Podcasting is the method of distributing multimedia files, such as audio programs or music videos, over the Internet using either the RSS or Atom syndication formats, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers.

Slide 46: Why use podcasts? Podcasts enable students to share their  knowledge and expertise with others through a creative outlet. Podcasts tap into a mode of media input that is  commonplace for digital natives. Podcasts empower students to form  relationships with the content and each other in relevant ways.

Slide 47: Why use podcasts? Podcasting is yet another way for them  [students] to be creating and contributing ideas to a larger conversation, and it’s a way of archiving that contribution for future audiences to use. Will Richardson, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other  Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms

Slide 48: How can podcasts be used? In the classroom, educators and students can  use podcasts to inform others about class news, current events, and areas of interest. Students can use a podcast forum to  persuade their peers to help others, make a difference, or try something new. Podcasts can also be used to edutain others  through creative narratives.

Slide 49: How can podcasts be used? Podcasts engage students in thinking critically  about their speaking fluency and communication skills. The opportunity to create a podcast about what  students would like to discuss and share with others is extremely motivating.

Slide 50: Other Enduring Benefits Along with the use of technology there are certain  responsibilities that educators and students need to follow. Educators need to instruct students on safe and acceptable  use of technology in and outside of the classroom. Not only do students need to learn how to appropriately  research, but also how to safely and properly share information online. Podcasts allow students to learn first hand about copyright  laws and fair use issues.

Slide 51: Jumping in with both feet . . . Listen to a few podcasts online  iTunes > Source List > Podcasts > Education  http://www.podcastalley.com/  http://www.ipodder.org/  http://epnweb.org/  http://www.jakeludington.com/archives/000405.html  (“Podcasting with Windows Media Player) Get a feel for the genre  Podcasts are not “polished” – production value is secondary  to the content

Slide 52: Searching for Podcasts - iTunes

Slide 53: Subscribing to Podcasts

Slide 54: Creating a Podcast Write your script. 1. Practice. 2. Record your audio file. (Audacity) 3. Edit your audio (Effect > Normalize) 4. Add and credit legally useable music (optional) 5. File > Save Project. 6. File > Export as MP3 > Edit ID3 Tags 7. Upload the MP3 file to a web server. (GCast and 8. Audioblogger)

Slide 55: Audacity – Audio Editing Software http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ 

Slide 56: