New Data on the new 21st Century learners!

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Permalink Reply by nlowell on November 18, 2007 at 11:27am

OK, I listened to the first 20 minutes of the podcast (the presentation version won't play without plugins I don't have).

I don't know where to begin with this. There's a LOT of good stuff in terms of talking about how students view "learning" and when you use student words, the dichomy between learning and education is clear. I'm not so sure that it's clear to educators nor does it appear that your instrumentation clearly delineates. I suggest this because you use the phrase "learning environment" when you refer to school, and never use the phrase "educational environment." This, to my mind, is a serious oversight.

One of the findings that I found surprising isn't so much in the finding, but that you characterized it as surprising. You described how "kids" find online gaming to be social experiences where in they have "deep" relationships with others that they only meet in the game. This is hardly new, and shouldn't be news to anybody who's been involved in games and gaming for the last 15 years. These kinds of reports were coming out of the old MUD and MOO environments years ago. I wrote an article myself postulating that it might be useful as a teambuilding exercise to spend some time with online cohorts in a MUD where they forged common bonds and built friendships as a prelude to online learning way back in 2000.

This is an on-going and chronic problem even today with researchers in "games" like Second Life and World of Warcraft. Too many people are what I characterize as "tourists." They *study* the environment without ever coming to understand what's involved in being *in* the environment. A researcher in SL who has never opened a shop, bought land, or even visited a mall is ill-equiped to even ask meaningful questions, let alone find meaningful answers. A researcher in WoW who's never grouped up to slay, or be slain, can't really understand what the experience might be like so how can you ask any kind of realistic question?

That was where I shut off the audio. I really hope that this Educause report helps bring more people up to speed. I'm concerned for the number of people who are going to find it surprising.

Maybe you could make the data more readily accessible? Possibly post it here in tabular form? I wasn't sure if there was a link someplace that actually described the methodology and data analysis ... this appears to be good data that supports a lot of what we've known for a decade or more, but perhaps were never able to "prove" but I'd really like to see the primary before I buy into any particular conclusion.

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Permalink Reply by Sue Palmer on November 18, 2007 at 3:04pm

I just wanted to clarify that this is not our data or podcast, but a link, as we think it is important information. The data is not surprising to me personally. It validates what I experience as an educator who has jumped into the student's world with both feet in an attempt to better facilitate learning. My students have responded enthusiastically and the results are positive! I do find, however, that off the web, in my day to day teaching experience, I am most certainly in the minority. The teacher response is quite different. Most of the teachers I work with are not paying attention, and are not aware. For that reason I asked the question-- Are you surprised?

I will be looking for the underlying research myself to finish the blog article on my site. I will pass it on as soon as I can. Thanks for the thoughtful comments!

Sue P. aka The Maze

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Permalink Reply by nlowell on November 18, 2007 at 3:37pm

Oh! Thanks for clearing that up. I thought this was YOUR study. I missed that you were just referencing it. Reading too fast and thinking too slow.

Sorry about that.

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Permalink Reply by Edwin Wargo on November 18, 2007 at 11:45am

I think I've seen these results in print but hearing the podcast is helpful. Thanks for sharing it.

Julie makes an interesting point about math being the content area least likely to leverage technology. I just blogged about math as it was the theme of ASCD's Educational Leadership November issue. I found it really interesting that the issue has 13 articles on math and 3 references to technology. None of the references are really about direct instructional uses. This isn't to say the whole issue has to be about technology, web 2.0, or 21st century learning. And there are important themes such as the achievement gap and minority achievement in math discussed in it. But I guess what I find really fascinating is that we have parallel conversations that aren't being connected. Does anyone else find this intriguing?

Edwin

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Permalink Reply by nlowell on November 18, 2007 at 12:11pm

You mean like ours? :)

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Permalink Reply by Sue Palmer on November 19, 2007 at 9:07pm

I am working to put the video of this on my masterymaze.com site as part of the blog post. ...I'm having some conversion issues but hopefully it will be a "quick fix". The powerpoint which is in the video has some of the back up. I am still working on getting the rest!

Sue

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