Godness gracious: the internet changed my brain!

There have recently been some excellent articles about an issue that is fundamental to how schools think about the impact of technology on learning. On one side are the pessimists who see the changes being brought about by new technologies as a threat to the way we should learn and engage with information and ideas. On the other hand there are the optimists who believe that we adapt to make the appropriate use of new technogy and ways of doing things.

Nicholas Carr, in Is the internet making us dumber? in the Wall Street Journal writes about evidence that multi-tasking and the sheer distracting nature of the internet interferes with deep and sustained thinking. He says that people are losing the capacity they used to have to read a sustained argument and follow through complex ideas in an orderly manner. He writes:

"What we seem to be sacrificing in all our surfing and searching is our capacity to engage in the quieter, attentive modes of thought that underpin contemplation, reflection and introspection. The Web never encourages us to slow down. It keeps us in a state of perpetual mental locomotion"

Carr quotes research that suggests that our brains and being modified to adapt to this new dominant form of communication, and we are diminished by the process, and becoming more shallow in our thinking. It is a pretty frightening prospect: technology makes people dumb!

On the other hand, Clay Shirky, also in WSJ asks, Does the internet making you smarter? He takes a closer look at history and points out that we have been here before. The invention of movable type printing famously had a major impact on the refomation, breaking the control of access to scripture away from the established church. And, as Shirky says,

"Vulgar versions of the Bible and distracting secular writings fueled religious unrest and civic confusion, leading to claims that the printing press, if not controlled, would lead to chaos and the dismemberment of European intellectual life."

And it did, and we generally now think of this as a good thing. No doubt Nicholas Carr's of the day were filled with foreboding. Shirkey goes on to say,

"Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all of these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society."

We can say this now, but at the time it must have been frightening, with the controlled and well ordered system of distributing and interpreting text being destroyed all of a sudden - over a few decades.

Shirky points out a flaw in the story of the pessimists regarding technology, that they romanticise the past. Carr writes about people in the past ploughing through readings that kept their minds on a sustained argument. Very few people did this. It wasn't ever the experience of most people. He also acknowledges that the path to progress is very crooked. Guttenberg's presses produced erotic novels before scientific journals were invented.

"Reading is an unnatural act; we are no more evolved to read books than we are to use computers. Literate societies become literate by investing extraordinary resources, every year, training children to read. Now it's our turn to figure out what response we need to shape our use of digital tools."

Presumably learning how to read changed our brains. It should be remembered that Socratese complained bitterly about the intoduction of writing to the curriculum in ancient Greece because it would reduce the capacity of young people to memorise, which no doubt it did.

A third player, Steven Pinker in the New York Times in Mind over Mass Media addresses the issue of our brains being changed by new experiences. He says "cognitive neuroscientists roll their eyes at such talk". Every time the brain learns something new it changes, and adapts. He accepts that distraction, for example, as Carr complains, is a problem,

"But distraction is not a new phenomenon. The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life."

This is where teachers and common sense come into play. Yes, the internet offers great potential for distraction, so teachers have to work to help students manage it, so they can benefit from its undoubed bounty of information and communication.

The three short articles are much more detailed than my summary. They address a crucial issue for school leaders to be clear about.

ACMA cyber safety one stop shop

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has a comprehensive web site dealing with all levels of cyber safety for children, teachers and parents [click image]

I provides useful material to look at with a view to using with students and parents. It is relatively conservative in its advice, naturally, but provides good material for students to react to and explore. It would be good to give a summary (maybe prepared by students) of what your kids think of their advice.

They are no doubt looking for latest feedback all the time to update the site. I looked a some advice for parents and was prompted to send them a suggestion to improve and update their information.

iPad for schools?

It is early days to decide whether the iPad has a significant role in schools and education in general, but I think it will. It is quite a different type of computer and many will just focus on what the iPad cannot do, not giving due attention to the thing it does better.

I have only been bonding with my iPad for a little over a week and I think its huge advantage is immediacy. It is quite different from a laptop because it is immediately available to use. In schools this is very valuable. In two minutes a student can switch on her iPad, open email, read a message and jump off to a web site. This is pretty important in engaging the attention of 30 students. There is virtually no delay, and the size of the ipad and the touch interface all make it significantly more personal interaction. Even the size on a desk is important. There is room on a desk for the iPad and books. The touch screen is a much better collaborative interface than mouse control.

The most significant limitation of the iPad that I can see is the reliance on the on-screen keyboard. This is fine for web browsing and short text input, for me, but then I am a touch typist. I suspect that two finger typers will find it quite satisfactory. However, for longer input sessions a bluetooth keyboard is an option. A class may well manage with a group of these for students who prefer them.

One thing we can be sure of is that the range of apps available for similar tablet computers will expand very quickly, making an assessment of the value of these computers a continuing feast.

Ethics of a Walled Garden

The concept of a walled garden has been in use for some time to describe an approach to school access to the wider world, and the internet in particular. A school with a walled garden approach to internet access only allows students to explore a limited part of the internet that is deemed to be safe and of educational value to students. The term is mainly used in a derisory manner by ICT in education people to describe over-restricted student systems that provide teachers and students with a severely truncated version of the internet.

For young children we have always provided a highly protected learning environment as they start to gain skills and understandings about the big wide world. By the senior years we are used to the idea that they read adult literature and explore sophisticated and sometimes quite dark ideas - like some of the themes in Shakespeare. Throughout my career there has always been some tension between the notion of providing children in the middle years with an enclosed school environment - a walled garden - or engaging them more with the world. The internet has brought this tension to the foreground because it opens a great big window into the world from any computer, making it difficult to isolate the school from the wider world. Children can have more choices where they play and explore.

At home, most students have quite open access to the internet. I think this creates a real ethical dilemma for administrators and teachers. In who's interests is a walled garden approach to the internet? If their school's internet is a highly restricted walled garden then children will certainly be attracted to the lively forest over the wall.

Education departments and administrators justify the maintenance of very restricted internet access for students on the grounds that internet access including collaborative activities can lead to privacy risks, bullying and access to damaging material. This is said in full awareness of the fact that outside the school, children may well face all these risks with little protection. Experts in child safety are unanimous that the best protection against the risks mentioned above is child awareness and skills development. This can be done best by schools working in cooperation with parents. It seems to me that ethically, teachers should be focusing on what is best for the student and this is not served well by restricting the learning that can best occur in a classroom. If schools engage their students with sensible use of the internet this learning will help children in their home use of the internet. School administrators who support a highly restricted school environment often cite parent complain or litigation as risks. This is a hint that their actions may be more self-serving than being in the interests of their students. Students who are engaged in wide-ranging internet access will learn discrimination skills and selectivity. Students engaged in school social networking for learning will learn about managing their privacy and online safety measures. They will learn skills that help them in their online life at home.

For a school to largely withdraw their students from engagement with the internet and some of its potential risks is to my mind ethically questionable when we know that a large majority of students from at least age 12 and beyond are actively engaged in this world out of school. Educators cannot use the argument that this is not the school's role because the internet is a dominant and growing medium in our society and in education.

Parents are likely to be very supportive of initiatives in this area. The boundaries of appropriate behaviour are not firm and teachers are well placed to help their students think through what is appropriate. The level of engagement with the internet I am supporting for middle years students includes password protected collaborative sites, engagement with peers and lightly filtered but monitored internet access: a walled garden but with a low wall.




Image http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walled_garden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_273916.jpg

Australian Curriculum site: finding your way around

Here is a little video (4 min) I made based on a few hours exploring the site. It demonstrates the features and tricks to navigate the Australian Curriculum Consultation web site. The site is polished and encourages feedback..

eBooks and horses

In returning to The Infernal ebook topic of January, I am reminded that I have been told over and over again by people sceptical about a future with ebooks that nothing can replace the book - the feel the smell etc. etc. Well people used to feel that way about horses. When horses were ubiquitous in the community, they were generally valued and even loved (the feel the smell etc. etc.) and few people could imagine life without them. It took about two decades for the automobile to largely replace the horse in our community. We won't have that much time to adjust to the ebook. So it would be a good idea for people to have a calm and dispassionate look at what ebooks have to offer: especially if they are involved in education. This is not a for and agains argument but a little list of what ebooks offer in addition to that which books offer.

Storage: fifty or a hundred books stored in a package that weighs less than one hardcover book.
Accessibility: immediate acces to any part of any of these books; bookmarking and notes 'in' the text.
Integration: for web capable ebooks like the iPad, one device for internet research, reference (ebooks) and creative tools.
Portability: see Storage
Cost: too early to tell; they are generally about 20% cheaper, and there will probably be dramatic reductions in some texts that are purchased in large volumes. Many ebooks are free. Education systems will be motivated to produce their own texts to support some curriculum.
Reading Experience: In my experience most of the critics have never read an ebook. I have only used a small screen such as an iPhone, and I find a book a slightly better experience. But when the ebook costs $20 and the book $26, I buy the former.
Sharing: Books are easier to share, but this may change as purchase options change with ebooks. Some libraries are finding lending ebooks on line just like a real book to be very popular.

To return to the horse - automobile analogy, I think it likely that in ten years it may be a strong one, with paper books being an expensive and a slightly exotic way to give someone a special present. But if book printing-on-demand really takes off, then the balance of paper and digital books will be much more complex.

Digital Natives myth debunked (again!)

The Economist has a story on March 4th The net generation, unplugged which looks at the popular idea of modern students being 'digital natives' - a different kind of person to most of their 'digital immigrant' teachers. The term was coined by Mark Prensky, and is very popular among people trying to excite teachers about the need for an educational revolution. But it is being widely questioned, says The Economist.

'Michael Wesch, who pioneered the use of new media in his cultural anthropology classes at Kansas State University, is also sceptical, saying that many of his incoming students have only a superficial familiarity with the digital tools that they use regularly, especially when it comes to the tools’ social and political potential. Only a small fraction of students may count as true digital natives, in other words. The rest are no better or worse at using technology than the rest of the population.'

The article is worth reading as are the very smart comments that follow it, mostly agreeing. An exception is from Don Tapscott who coined the term Net Generation in 1997. He says he has evidence that it is real.

I think the different generation message might make the conference speaker spreading it feel smart and superior and in the forefront of thinking, but it is a damaging message to teachers struggling with the challenge of learning a lot of new skills. The digital native idea suggest that they can never catch up with their students who have differently wired brains due to growing up with technology. I am old enough to remember the same argument being put regarding comics! Over-generalising about the young and about social trends contradicts the diversity teachers see in their students.

My post of just 12 months ago on this topic provides reference to a research project on the subject that is worth reading.