Mr. Hamada’s Universe

Marc Prensky is undeniably more qualified and better versed than me when it comes to educational pedagogy. I respect that his work on Digital Immigrants v. Digital Natives (pdf) was groundbreaking. But that was published in 2001 – a veritable lifetime ago – and it is now, in my opinion, obsolete. Although using labels that can be construed as racist and/or xenophobic, its basic premise – that one segment of the population is inherently more comfortable with technology – is still true, but how that segment is parsed out of the whole isn’t quite as binary as Prensky describes.

Chris over at Betchablog does a great job of unraveling The Myth of the Digital Native:

The Natives vs Immigrants concept serves as a neat, tidy metaphor that is useful on a basic level to help understand some of the differences between Gen-Y and those who grew up in the primitive pre-Google world.  However, the problem with the metaphor is that while it’s neat and tidy, it is demonstrably wrong on so many levels.

Digital fluency and acquisition can be compared to language fluency and acquisition. You might recall the differences between BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitivie Academic Language Proficiency) put forth by Jim Cummins: BICS are the day-to-day language skills one needs to get by in social situations; CALP refers to the language skills necessary to succeed in an academic setting.

You see where I’m going here, right?

Prensky’s Digital Natives have the digital equivalent of BICS: they can text, chat, FaceBook, MySpace, and Google (simultaneously, most of the time!). Not every Native, though, posseses the analagous CALP. Can they search effectively? Do they know how to organize and search the massive amount of content they are accessing or creating? Do they collaborate effectively for learning purposes? The list of questions goes on.

In life, things are rarely ever black and white. There are infinite shades of grey that almost defy description. Digital fluency is no different. While I recognize how tempting it is offer categories in order to simplify the discussion, it is these categories that are sometimes the issue. With this concept of Digital Native, it is too easy for teachers to assume that all students of capable of anything technological and to not teach them the more academic skills. Even worse, it is too easy for teachers to assume that, because they are Digital Immigrants, they are not able to teach anything to their Native students.

We need a new nomenclature, one that helps to differentiate between BITS (Basic Interpersonal Technological Skills) and CATP (Cognitive Academic Technological Proficiency), one that promotes the idea that transiency between the categories is possible, and one that is not binary by nature. At first blush, I like the categories Digital Tourist, Digital Resident, and Digital Citizen but I know they are nowhere near sufficient. What categories would you suggest? (While were at it, can we improve upon the acronym CATP?)

Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives, Marc Prensky, BICS, CALP, Jim Cummins, labels, Betchablog,

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I have a confession to make: When looking over the 23 Things, there are only a handful of things that I don’t already feel like I have some sort of comfort with. I blog, I tweet, I wiki, I have a Personal Learning Network that I am continuously cultivating to suit my needs and interests. And I have firsthand experience as to how the collaborative nature of the read/write web has changed me as a teacher.

As an L^3 (LifeLong Learner; I’m a math teacher, give me a break!), I harness the power of Web 2.0 on an hourly basis. If I have blog questions, I tweet an Edublogs guru. If want to talk politics or pedagogy or sports or the joys of international living, I connect with intrepidteacher or MsMichetti. And I’m constantly reading the thoughts and blogs of some of the most influential 21st C. educationalists around. To say that I learn more from the people in my computer than the people in my building would be a gross understatement.

As a teacher, wikis allow me to encourage collaboration and independence between my students. Creative Commons licensed photos allow my students to ethically find images to support their work. YouTube gives me a library of media that can be used for business or pleasure.

Web 2.0 is just awesome (boom de ya da, boom de ya da!).

image: idn_web_rots by Rodrigo Vera

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Part of my school’s mission statement says, “Our mission is to encourage students to be independent, lifelong learners who strive for excellence”. With the proliferation of connectivity in general and Web 2.0 in particular, lifelong learning is more accessible and more relevant than ever.

Thing 1 is all about the 7.5 Habits of Effective Lifelong Learners.

One of these Habits is going to be easiest for me to get into: Play! My view towards most new things has always involved play. I’m a guy, and Real Guys don’t read directions! How do we learn? We play. When I sit in a new car, the first thing I do is push all the buttons to see what they do. When I get a new gizmo, I go through all the functions/buttons/menus just to see what’s “under the hood”. The same goes for a new Web 2.0 tool: I won’t know how to use it in my classroom or how to suggest that others can use it until I put it through it’s paces and find its strengths or limitations by just pushing all the buttons and seeing what they do!

Perhaps the most important habit will be to create and document my own learning toolbox. In my new role next year as Technology Facilitator, I will be responsible for helping all teachers in the Middle School/High School to create technology enriched learning experiences that leverage our 1:1 TabletPC program. I think that the tools that are highlighted here will be invaluable to that end.

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We interrupt your regular scheduled programming to bring you this special event.

Over the next 8 – 10 weeks, I will be participating in the K12 Learning 2.0 workshop and using this blog as my reflection space. To most of my hundreds tens one or two readers, this may not be very interesting. For that, I apologize in advance. But if you do find it interesting, by all means let me know. Your comments and insight can only help further my understanding!

Image: hdtv svt2 by kalleboo

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Friedman hints at it. Pink implies it (or he might flat out say it; I haven’t finished reading the book!). And now Wolfram|Alpha confirms it: Content is Dead, Concept is King!

There is no point in teaching my students how to become a CPA. There will always be somebody cheaper (and probably better at it) to do that work somewhere else in the world (Friedman). It will be your ability to think creatively that will allow you to flourish in this situation (Pink).

With the launch of W|A, my students now have a resource that will graph lines and find intercepts for them (among other things). My focus is no longer on the computational content; it now has to be on the creative concept. What does the graph mean?  Why is it relevant? It’s no longer enough to ask the students graph something just because: we now need a reason to want to interpret that graph. It needs context and connections, not abstraction and solitude.

I can understand Maria’s point when she says:

It does have the potential to seriously wreak havoc on the way we teach math today if students can simply copy all their work from an A.I. website.  Whether you think that it’s time that somebody forced a change, or whether you think it’s just hype and not really a threat, I think we should all be aware that after today, it exists.

But I think MsMichetti has right idea:

All those graphs, tables, new vocabulary, and more are useless without using Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) to sort them out and make sense of them. Why aren’t we teaching more visual literacy and data interpretation — in every subject area?

Let’s be clear: I am not advocating that students no longer need to learn how to graph functions or do symbolic algebraic manipulation. Of course these types of skills are important, but they should no longer be the main focus of our curriculum. If technology is like air (invisible, abundant and noticeable only when missing a la Chris Lehmann), then why wouldn’t I assume that at some point in the very near future – if not already – all of my students will have ubiquitous access to W|A and its inevitable improvements? What happens when W|A comes out with the killer mobile app that puts this knowledge in everybody’s hands at any time? Why would I fight/resist this change?

The jury is still out on the idea that Google has made us stupid. I’m adding more fuel to the similar W|A debate. But this much is clear: we can never put these genies back in their bottles. For better or for worse, we’re going to have to un-learn our old-school emphases on computation and recall and re-learnhow to harness their powers to focus on interpretation, analysis and synthesis of information.

Long live the King!

image: if i were king by Jason Nicholls
image: Genie’s Lamp by Davic