(Forgive me if this sounds like rambling)
Do they really think differently? I think that is a really interesting question, yet a good title for this article. I was amazed by the statistics in beginning of this article. Between all of the hours playing video games, talking on cell phones, watching TV, and the 500,000 commericals, it is no wonder that only 5,000 hours were spent actually reading real “hold them in your hand” books. I must say that when I was growing up, I spent many, many hours listening to music and talking on our wall hung telephone. I actually watch more TV now then I did when I was younger. I didn’t have a cell phone until I was a freshman in college, and yet it amazes me that my elementary students already have their own cell phones.
I liked seeing the experiment in the article about a musicians brain vs a nonmusician’s brain. I have heard about studies exactly like this one for years. It has been scientifically proven that those students who participate in the arts score higher on the SAT and ACT’s.
Prensky states that ”social psychology provides strong evidence that one’s thinking patterns change depending on one’s expieriences.” I would have to go along with that statement. I love the fact and find comfort in the thought that we are all different. You could take a group of people working on a project and you could end up having several ways of accomplishing that one task. If I assigned a class project to my students and each and everyone one of them heard the same explanation, I am sure that each one of them will get some different out of the project.
Attention spans….what a great topic. It seems to me that attention spans now days are a lot shorter than they were when I was in school. It is funny for me to think about that, sometimes I sit back and I observe a class and think “did I act that way when I was in school?” Don’t get me wrong I have some good students but a good percentage of them have minds working at the speed of 1000 miles per minute, on top of not being able to sit still. Prensky makes the statement, ”it generally isn’t that Digital Natives can’t pay attention, it’s that they choose not to.” Just like with the Sesame Street example, I could be giving a discussion to a class and have a handfull of students really in truly paying 100% attention to me and have the rest tuning me in and out and sometimes get better results out of the students who I thought were not paying attention. It is for this reason that I try very hard to switch up my activities every 5-8 minutes. I might be using the same topic, but different activities to get that topic across.
I liked the game-based learning section of this article, and I have heard the comments that educators make about the games “sugar coating” the learning expierence. I don’t see it as sugar coating, I see the games as one more outlet to get your point across. (that is if the game is designed well) I love to use anything that can get the point across to my students easier than I can. And yes they will sometimes respond better to a game or video than to their teacher. Like Prensky says “Practice-time spent on learing- works.” I love this statement. It is almost like words to live by for musicians. Musicians spend all of their lives practices for the next big thing with a big payoff in the end. If “games capture their attention and make it happen” like Prensky says then why don’t we take that extra step and make it happen.
I whole-heartedly agree with Mr. Prensky when he says that ”digital native studnets depend very much on us”. So, why then is it so hard for us to get through? I will say that they may be thinking differently, but maybe we as educators should be thinking differently too.
1 response so far ↓
1
Karen
// Mar 5, 2006 at 11:05 am
Just some thoughts as I read through your posting Kelly. When my son, a digital native if ever there was one, was young my husband started taking him to Marshall football games (potty-trained was the operative word there in terms of when one was old enough to go to a game with Dad). That was back in the days of Fairfield and they would go tailgate around Prindle Field and then sit in the endzone where there was plenty of space for Christopher to run around. Mike constantly marveled at how Christopher never seemed to pay attention to any of the game; he was busy playing his own little football game in the endzone. What really struck Mike, however, was how – on the way home – Christopher could talk about every single play, reports yards, make detailed observations about the game. I saw the same thing here at home. Christopher was a lego’s kid. He spent hours constructing these intricate creations while sitting in front of the television. He seemed to totally engrossed in his work and yet later, he would talk about what he had heard and seen on television.
I wish I completely understood the neurology behind that way of working. I’ve known, because of Christopher, that at least his brain is different and what I wonder about is whether or not it is that difference that has caused him to be a digital native or if being a digital native has caused that difference?