Digital Natives and the Snark Syndrome

The Hunting of the Snark

'Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried,As he landed his crew with care;Supporting each man on the top of the tideBy a finger entwined in his hair.

'Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:That alone should encourage the crew.Just the place for a Snark! I have said thrice:What I tell you three times is true.'

Digital Natives and the Snark Syndrome

Simon Lorimer

Kids are wired differently these days….They’re digitally nimble. They multitask, transpose and extrapolate. And they think of knowledge as infinite.

We’re still in a brick-and-mortar, 30-students-to-1-teacher paradigm, but we need to get out of that framework to having 200 or 300 kids taking courses online, at night, 24/7, whenever they want.

Lewin, T. (2009, 8 9). New York Times. Retrieved 10 16, 2009, from: In the future text books are history: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/education/09textbook.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=Digital%20Textbooks&st=cse

Some issues

• Generational hypothesis not supported• Processing preferences• Gender issues• Disempowerment

OECD. (2008). New millennium learners. Initial findings on the effects of digital technologies on school-age learners. Learning in the 21st Century: Research, Innovation and Policy. Paris: OECD/CERI.

OECD. (2008). New millennium learners. Initial findings on the effects of digital technologies on school-age learners. Learning in the 21st Century: Research, Innovation and Policy. Paris: OECD/CERI.

Do these HE conclusions fit?• 1. The rhetoric that university students are Digital Natives and university staff

are Digital Immigrants is not supported.• 2. There is great diversity in students’ and staff experiences with technology,

and their preferences for the use of technology in higher education.• 3. Emerging technologies afford a range of learning activities that can improve

student learning processes, outcomes, and assessment practices.• 4. Managing and aligning pedagogical, technical and administrative issues is a

necessary condition of success when using emerging technologies for learning.• 5. Innovation with learning technologies typically requires the development of

new learning and teaching and technology-based skills, which is effortful for both students and staff.

• 6. The use of emerging technologies for learning and teaching can challenge current university policies in learning and teaching and IT.

Kennedy, G. (2009). Educating the net generation: A handbook of findings for practice and policy. Melbourne, Australia: Australian learning and teaching council.

• Digital inclusion• Democratic• Effortful• Messy• Home use matters

Discussion Questions

• What questions should we expect educational research to give us the answer to?

• What are the uses and limitations of the native/immigrant image?

• What findings discussed are supported or not supported by your observations

• What borders exist between school and social settings – should they continue to exist? What would be different without them?

• What is age appropriate?• Home use matters – how do we support this?

Some sources

• http://simonlorimer.wordpress.com/category/btg-sources/ my own list of sources

• http://www.netgenskeptic.com/ the source of most of my sources

• http://www.nml-conference.be/?cat=4 from the OECD