Keynote – Lee Crockett provides an insight to the Digital Generation

Ulearn 2010 kicked off with an intelligent and humorous look at the differences between digital learners and those that are educating them. Lee Crockett, our first keynote presenter, presented some of the brain science related to digital learners while keeping the audience entertained with his use of media to complement his key messages.

He set the scene by pointing out that we live in a world where, as we get comfortable with technology, it is already disappearing into the past. We live in an age of disposable information where newspapers can be out of date by the time they are delivered. To help illustrate the sheer amount of data that is sent around the world every day, he compared it to 13 stacks of books each stretching all the way to Pluto. This leads to the inability to handle the sheer amount of information available to us which is often called ‘info whelm’.

In this digital landscape, the entire works of human kind will be able to accessed from mobile devices by anyone at anytime. This means we need to equip students with skills to sift, evaluate and process digital information.

Not only has the world changed but so have digital learners themselves. As parents and educators, we need to understand that while kids look the same on the outside as we did, on the inside they are different. Because of digital bombardment, the brains of the digital generation are adapting to the new technologies. Our students are neurotically wired differently as proven by studies into their brains. From a difference in the way their eyes track across a website or a page of text, the speed at which they expect to receive information and feedback, their ability (or perceived ability) to multi-task, their increased recall rate of information when combined with multi-media, and their collaborative approach to learning, we as educators need to recognise that the way we prefer to learn may not meet the needs of digital learners.

However, we also have skills that our students will need to develop to be effective learners. While they may think they are good at multi-tasking, it is shown that in some situations, the quality of work can increase if students maintain a single focus on a task. Similarly, while a student may want to make their own pathways through information by hyperlinking, there are times that they will better understand the perspective of the author by moving through the material in a linear function. It is not a case of one way or the other but recognising that learning both sets of skills will benefit students in different situations.

We need to provide students with a fundamentally different set of skills. Standarised testing and teaching to the tests is part of the old paradigm.  We don’t need four year degrees anymore. We need 40 years of learning and relearning.

Our students are different. It is not about what is right or wrong but understanding the differences. Lee posed the question, “How many important things are going on around us that we don’t see because of the tyranny of the urgent?” Lee helped emphasis this point by showing us a video and asking us to count how many passes are made between the students wearing white shirts. Count the number of passes for yourself by clicking on the image below to take you to the YouTube video.

Now watch it again without counting passes and see if you notice anything else in your second watch. It was amazing how many people missed certain details the first time.

The final statement from Lee was to enjoy the conference and to be open, be still and listen in order to tune our perceptions.

You can download notes on his presentation on his website (after you subscribe for free). The address is:

http://www.committedsardine.com/handouts.cfm