Week 4 Reflections

Q1: I am definetly more comfortable composing digitally.  The real reason is not due to a lack of ability with pen and paper, but the editing tools available when composing digitially and the fact that I can type much faster than I can write (due to a highly overly developed sense of neatness - I can type neatly as fast as I can.  If I write as fast as I can, it is not as neat as I like it to be.)

Q2: I cannot remember anything.  Just 5 years ago, I could remember literally hundreds of IP addresses and which servers/hosts they belonged to, I could remember the same number of command lines and procedures, I knew the phone numbers of all of my colleagues, associates, and vendors and I could do it without thinking.  Now, I rely on my iPhone for all of my contacts, notes, etc.  Part of that is due to becoming more and more reliant on the technology and part of it, let's just face it, is age.  I always use to say that the day that I need a PDA to keep up with everything is the day that I have too much to do.  Well, you know the rest of the story.  One thing that I definetly hate about being reliant upon the technology for these pieces of information is that I am a lot less efficient than I used to be.  When I could maintain all of that information in my head, I could recall it and utilize it much faster than I can now that I have to look it up.

Q3: See Q2!

Q4: I use the Internet for everything and I don't go anywhere without my iPhone.

Q5: I can actually engage in 5 or 6 activites at once and have to on a regular basis.

Q6: I do play video games and the better the graphics are, the more I love 'em!

I am a hybrid between Gen X and Net Gen.  I am very independent and skeptical, but I am also detemined and hopeful.  I love my freedom to do things the way that I want them done and I don't need to work in groups to be happy (I'm happier working alone) and I desire a real balance between work and life.  I love my parents - they are the smartest people on Earth and have been since I was about 24 years old.  I hate red tape; I want to get things done.  This also feeds into the fact that I hate anything slow!  (Except a slow smoked brisket!)

Oblinger and Oblinger present a lot of critical issues for educators in their first chapter.  There is a lot to digest, but I think that there are several highlight points.  The first deals with the way that students approach technology.  Based on research it is evident that the Net Gen students do not look at the technology so much as what they are able to do with the technology and if the technology does not meet expectations, then it is not deemed to be "technology".  They are looking for interaction and validation.  I wonder then, if students would define the "technologies" that they are presented with in primary school as technology or not.  From experience I believe that there are a lot of programs and things that we engage in as educators in the name of employing educational technology which would in fact not even meet the students' definition of technology let alone that of those educators who are in the know about what makes up educational technology.  The generational, or as the authors very specifically point out, experiential, gap between classroom educators and the Net Gen student means that we have a lot of work to do to develop these experiences in our staff to bring them up to where our students are, enabling them to empathize with where the students are learning from and thus meet them there, and/or develop other mechanisms for leading them in their educational paths.  I think this is going to drive a shift from the traditionally valued "seasoned" veteran teacher to younger, more experientially equal teachers who can engage the students more natively.  I wonder how many of the seasoned educators can make a transition in experience and approach quickly enough to adapt the educational environment to meet these students before we loose them.

The second point that I think is paramount to how and why we use technology in education has to do with the issue brought up dealing with multiple media literacy.  Certainly our job as educators is to meet the students where they are, but I cannot help but wonder how the prefence for graphics over written word will impact students once they leave for the work place.  I think we need to know if adaption to offering more visual queues and a decreased focus on written instruction and work will benefit students once they leave us.  Are the various industries making the same transition or will the students find themselves unable to function in a work force still bound to traditional methods and procedures.  I cannot help but think of the more and more common occurance of the fast food cashier who cannot return/calculate correct change for a customer because they have only to push buttons on a register that shows pictures of the products and performs the calculations for them.  We have already moved to a heavy reliance upon calculators in primary schools for standardized tests; how damaging is this transition to meeting our students "where they are" on their future success.  I don't recall having been allowed to utilize a calculator on the computations portion of the GRE....I am not saying that we should not adapt to our students or that we should not attempt to meet them where they are.  I think, however, that it is imperative that we understand the long term consequences of adpting to them, rather than having them develop to some traditional approaches to learning.

The last comment that I will make is really more of a question: How?  Now that we know about how important social interaction and immediate gratification is to our students, how do we develop the skills and how do we alter the educational environment to meet them?  Professional development has to be critically reviewed.  The way that we approach PD has to mature and take on the qualities of quality professional development.  The changes in perspective and behaviour that must be taken on by the traditional teacher to meet these new expectations cannot occur in a sit down meeting once a month, with a mandate given to go and make it happen.  I think that the real change to traditional "professional development" that is going to need to take place, and will be the change that will turn most educators on their heads, is going to be the fact that we will need to transition from the veteran teachers leading the way and mentoring the "young 'uns" to the "young 'uns" mentoring the veterans.  There will need to be lots of pride swallowed for the traditional educational organization to make the changes needed to shift to this student centric learning model.