It's About Learning

Understanding and Engaging the Net Generation

Dwayne Harapnuik — February 22, 2010 — Leave a comment

According to Don Tapscott’s research detailed in Grown Up Digital, understanding the following eight differentiating characteristics, or as he likes to call them Net Generation Norms, is central to understanding how this generation is changing work, markets, learning, the family and society.

They want freedom from everything they do, from freedom of choice to freedom of expression.

Choice is like oxygen.
In contrast — older generations are overwhelmed by choice.
Use technology to act on choice.

They love to customize, personalize.

MySpace
Facebook
MyGovernment Portal…
Billion dollar tuner industry
Clothes, shoes, themselves

They are the new scrutinizers.

Transparency is crucial.
Consumer – prosumer.
Analyze massive amounts of data when making decisions.
Values matter.

They look for corporate integrity and openness when deciding what to buy and were to work.

Goes hand in hand with transparency because the Internet strips away barriers.
Look at corporate values to see if they align with their own.

The Net Gen wants entertainment and play at their work, education and social life.

Interactive games – 82% of children from 2-17 have regular access to video games.
Video Games – $46.5 billion by 2010.
A generation bred on the interactive experience.

They are the collaboration & relationship generation.

Facebook.
Warcraft & other multi-user games.
Texting.
Peer influence more important than advertising.

The Net Gen has a need for speed — not just video games.

Real time chats–every instant message should result in an instant response.
Faster technology.

They are the Innovators

Change/innovation is the norm.
Boomers = glacial
Net Gen = hyperdrive

Perhaps one of more important chapters/sections of this book deal with the Net Generation as learners. Tapscott summarizes the section with the following:

School 2.0 – Seven strategies that will help you become a better teacher (page 148).

Don’t throw technology into the classroom and hope for good things. Focus on the change in pedagogy, not the technology. Learning 2.0 is about dramatically changing the relationship between the teacher and students in the learning process. Get that right and use technology for student focused, customize, collaborative learning environment.
Cut back on lecturing. You don’t have all the answers. Besides broadcast learning doesn’t work for this generation. Start asking students questions and listen to their answers. Listen to the questions students asked too. Let them discover the answer. Let them co-create a learning experience with you.
Empower students to collaborate. Encourage them to work with each other and show them how to access the world of subject matter experts available on the web.
Focus on lifelong learning, not teaching to the test. It’s not what they know when they graduate that counts; it’s their capacity and love for lifelong learning that’s important. Don’t worry if kids forget the dates of key battles of history. They can look them up. Focus on teaching them how to learn — not what to know.
Use technology to get to know each student and build self-paced, customized learning programs for them.
Design educational programs according to the eight norms. There should be choice, customization, transparency, integrity, collaboration, fun, speed, and innovation in their learning experiences. Leverage the strengths of Net Gen culture and behaviors and project-based learning.
Reinvent yourself as a teacher, Professor, or educator. You too can say, “Now, I can hardly wait to get up in the morning to go to work!”

The key to School 2.0 is that the instructor puts pedagogy first and focuses on the learner, the learning environment and the learning itself. Ironically, Tapscott only talks about technology specifically in point five and emphasizes the need to use to technology to “get to know each student and build self-paced, customized learning programs.”

Not everyone agrees with Tapscot. Mark Bullen the Associate Dean, Learning & Teaching Centre, BC Institute of Technology has created the Net Gen Nonsense Blog and offers his review of Grown Up Digital in the post: Tapscott Strikes Again. Bullen states that the blog is:

dedicated to debunking the myth of the net generation, particularly as it relates to learning, teaching and the use of technology. By using this forum I hope to start a conversation around this issue and promote an informed discussion of strategies that post secondary institutions can use to harness the power of Web 2.0 and other learning technologies that is based in fact not rhetoric.

Despite the goals of the blog, Bullen does miss his own mark regarding informed discussions by offering a criticism of Tapscotts book, Grown Up Digital, by only reading the book jacket and comparing it to the Tapscott’s earlier work. To be fair to Bullen his blog does offer some interesting perspectives.
Another critic of Tapscott is Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University who has worked as a Director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversaw studies about culture and American life. In his book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, Bauerlein makes the argument that despite all this exposure to digital media:

…most young people in the United States neither read literature (or fully know how), work reliably (just ask employers), visit cultural institutions (of any sort), nor vote (most can’t even understand a simple ballot). They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount foundations of American history, or name any of their local political representatives.

The fundamental premise to his argument is that the technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their minds had the opposite effect because screen based text/reading has been dumbed down to such a low level that is isn’t intellectually stimulating.

While there is some merit to Bauerlein’s argument and it is true that traditional print media has greater amounts and frequency of higher order vocabulary the blame cannot be placed on solely on technology. The deployment of technology in the traditional classroom has not gone much beyond PowerPoint replacing overheads and digital course packs hosted on an LMS replacing photocopied materials so if there is any blame to be placed it may not fall on technology at all. Could an educational system that places an emphasis on rote memorization, the delivery of content and standardized testing have as much or perhaps even more to do with this problem.

Regardless of who or what is to blame (assuming that blame is even due) Net Generation learners are who they are and it is our (educators) responsibility to recognize their preparedness for learning and create learning environments that meet their needs, are engaging and significant.

In 21st century learning 21st century learning, educational reform, Learning, Social Media, social networking

The Cost of Status Quo

Dwayne Harapnuik — February 18, 2010 — Leave a comment

Christensen (co-author of Disrupting Class) uses the following two statements attributed to Albert Einstein to emphasize the need for a new perspective:

“The significant problems we have a cannot be solved with the same level of thinking we were using when we created them.”

Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.

If we don’t change our level of thinking to encompass the systemic problems within which our schools are embedded and if we persist in believing that the problems of our schools can be solved by only improving, we will never succeed (Disrupting Class, p. 156).

On a similar note in a conversation with Susan Ives editor of Land & People, Yvon Chouinard founder of Patagonia warns:

I always say that there’s no difference between a pessimist who says, “Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,” and an optimist who says, “Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn our fine anyway.” Either way nothing happens.

In 21st century learning 21st century learning, educational reform, Innovation

A Vision for 21st Century Learning

Dwayne Harapnuik — February 17, 2010 — Leave a comment

[youtube]Mirxkzkxuf4[/youtube]

Another interesting perspective on learning in the 21st Century.

In 21st century learning, Video - Wednesday Watchlist

Disrupting Class – An Overview

Dwayne Harapnuik — February 15, 2010 — Leave a comment

In the book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen and co-authors Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson identify intrinsic motivation or rather the lack of intrinsic motivation as one of the fundamental problems with our K-12 educational system. They subsequently argue that because students have different learning needs a key step in making schools intrinsically motivating is to customize education to match the way each child learns best. Christensen, Horn and Johnson further point out that the interdependent architecture of schools forces them to standardize the way that they teach and test and it is this standardization that is at odds with a student-centric approach that would address each learner’s fundamental needs. To move away from this monolithic instruction of batches of students, the authors argue that schools must move toward a modular student-centric approach and use computer-based and online learning as the catalyst for disruptive innovation.

The notion of intrinsically motivating student-centric instruction is not new nor is the argument for computer based instruction. To immediately address expected objections from educational administrators, Christensen, Horn and Johnson explain that the 60 billion dollars spent placing computers in K-12 schools in the US over the past 20 years hasn’t shown any improvement in the system because schools have done what all organization do when instituting new technology:

They have crammed the new technologies into their existing structure, rather than allowing disruptive technology to take root in a new model and allow that to grow and change how they operate (p. 12).

Rather then engage in the traditional educational debates Christensen, Horn and Johnson use Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory, detailed in the book Innovator’s Dilemma, to identify why the current educational system is unable to change and to also prescribe a process of how true innovation can be realized. In a nutshell disruptive innovation:

…is not a breakthrough improvement. Instead of sustaining the traditional improvement trajectory in the plane of competition, it disrupts the trajectory by bringing to market a product or service that is not as good as what companies historically been selling. Because it is not as good, existing customers in the back plane cannot use it. But by making the product affordable and simple to use, the disruptive innovation benefits people who had been unable to consume the back plane product-people we call “non-consumers”. Disruptive innovations take root in simple undemanding applications in a new plane of competition-where the very definition of what constitutes quality, and therefore, improvement means, is different from what quality and improvement mean in the back plane (p. 47).

Because companies or organizations are focused success and on satisfying needs of their current customers they build systems and infrastructures to ensure that those customer need are met. Ironically the system and infrastructure that make them successful with their current customers are the same systems and infrastructure that prevents them from being innovative and engaging entirely new customers in the disruptive plane.

Perhaps the best example of disruptive innovation is the personal computer (PC). Companies like Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) were destroyed by the PC because they could not see past the huge margins (over $100K per unit) in the minicomputer market and saw the $800 margins of the Apple II and its focus on non-consumers-children as non threatening. The more DEC listened to its best customers who demanded improvements with their minicomputers, the more they overlooked the growth and expansion of computing until computing power increased to the point where smaller PC were capable of doing the work previously done by mainframe and minicomputers.

How could DEC have missed seeing this coming? Investment and budgetary dollars are traditionally allocated toward sustaining innovation and improvements in existing infrastructure. Research has revealed that true innovations comes not from existing organizations but by new entities that are not bound by an asymmetrical motivation to keep on focused on sustaining rather than disruption.

But how does this radical and disruptive change come to the institution of Education? Christensen, Horn and Johnson argue that:

virtually every successful disruptive innovation took root similarly-competing against non-consumption-so that people were delighted to have a product even if its capabilities were limited … By migrating instruction delivery to custom-configured vehicles able to meet individual students’ needs schools can realize the dream of transforming the classroom from a monolithic one into a student-centric one where all students learn in ways their individual minds are wired to learn (p. 86).

The authors point to the growth of computer-based learning in Advanced Placement (AP), and other specialized courses in small, rural and urban schools unable to offer the breadth of credits. Home-schools, charter and private schools are additional areas where computer-based instruction is gaining a market foothold.

The disruption is likely to proceed in two stages. The first stage is computer-based learning and it is well on it way to maturing to the point were proprietary and relatively expensive software that is really not much more than an extension of the current monolithic system is giving way to modular student-centric technologies that can respond to the unique needs of the learner. These student-centric technologies will focus on customization and will allow the teachers, parents and the learner to customize the system to help learners to learn each subject in the ways that their brains are wired to learn.

Christensen, Horn and Johnson also suggest that the following four factors will accelerate the substitution of computer-based learning for monolithic learning:

Computer-based learning will keep on improving to the point were it no longer is considered just an alternative-or better than nothing.
The ability for students, teachers, and parents to select a learning pathway for each body of material that fits the learner
Looming teacher shortage.
Cost will significantly fall markets scale up.

When can we expect this substitution to take place? Christensen, Horn and Johnson claim that:

this will happen in approximately 2014 when online courses have a 25% market share in high schools-six years from the publication date of the book. Student-centric learning is not far away (p. 143).

To forge a consensus for this type of radical change in the public school system the authors also point the need for leadership in establishing a common language (identifying and agreeing on the problem), the effective use of power (required when there is little or no consensus) and separation (a new entity must be spawned that will facilitate the innovation). Separation is such a significant factor that in the author’s studies of disruptive innovation:

The only instances where an industry leading company remained the leader in disruptive technology while becoming the leader in the disruptive wave as well occurred when the corporate leaders wielded the separation tool. They established an independent business unit under the corporate umbrella and gave it unfettered freedom to pursue the disruptive opportunity with a unique business model (p 191).

With this research fact in mind the authors deplore the school system leaders, elected officials and administrators to have one person–and over time an organization reporting to that person-whose sole job is to implement online courses.

Perhaps one of the most refreshing aspects of the book was that the authors were not education bashing but rather suggested that the institution of education is the only institution capable of rebuilding itself and meeting these challenges. Society has continually asked education to change itself to meet new needs which is equivalent to rebuilding an airplane in mid-flight. The institution of education has repeatedly meet these challenges and the authors hope that their book can be a manual for this next rebuild.

This is a must read for everyone in education. The book has encourage me to consider many many questions. The following is just a few that come to mind: