How do we help learners make the most of the web? What opportunities does it afford us? Where might it take us? An optimistic but cautious take on the web and learning

1. Restless digital natives
The impact on learning
from the spaces, flows
and networks of the
internet
Colin Campbell
Bridging the Gap
Conference
Nov 2009

2. Questions I’d like to discuss
1. How useful is the term ‘digitial natives’?
2. What can we learn from recent studies into the ways
young people are using technology?
3. What are useful habits to adopt in our digital age?
4. Where is learning going?

3. What I am going to talk about?
1. How useful is the term ‘digitial natives’?

4. Web 2.0, 3.0.... how do you react to videos like the
one we just watched?

5. Digital native?

6. notions of digital natives vs digital
immigrants can inhibit understanding

7. Digital
native?
Digital
native?

8. Digital
childhood?

9. 2. What can we learn from recent studies of the ways
young people are using technology?

10. Slide ‘borrowed’ from Ewan McIntosh (apologies)

11. Slide ‘borrowed’ from Ewan McIntosh (apologies)

12. Living and Learning with New The research was a joint project of
the University of Southern California and the University
of California, Berkeley.
Research Summary
Media: Summary of Findings Over three years, University of California, Irvine
researcher Mizuko Ito and her team interviewed over
800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000
hours of online observations as part of the most extensive
from the Digital Youth Project U.S. study of youth media use.
Hanging around - people they know
increased
Messing about - video, images, complexity
mashing
higher order
Geeking Out - special interest groups thinking
(beyond their local social network) -
skills
critiquing, creating, analysing

13. Living and Learning with New The research was a joint project of
the University of Southern California and the University
of California, Berkeley.
Media: Summary of Findings Research Summary
Over three years, University of California, Irvine
researcher Mizuko Ito and her team interviewed over
800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000
from the Digital Youth Project hours of online observations as part of the most extensive
U.S. study of youth media use.
Conclusion
Peer-based learning has unique properties that
suggest alternatives to formal instruction, influence
of respected peers
There are, of course, idiosyncratic and distinctly
varied levels of use of digital tools and social
networks

14. Walled Gardens?

16. New Millenium Learners 2009
The OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
launched the New Millennium Learners (NML) project in 2007. It has the
global aim of investigating the effects of digital technologies on school-
age learners and providing recommendations on the most appropriate
institutional and policy responses from the education sector.
Cultural capital crucial
No clear links between technology use and academic
achievement (with the exception of some writing skills)
Access key to social inclusion

17. Slide ‘borrowed’ from Ewan McIntosh (apologies)

18. Slide ‘borrowed’ from Ewan McIntosh (apologies)

19. Both studies show the dominant use is
young people interacting socially online
and establishing norms within groups
Access to these spaces important for
social interaction
Important difference here from previous
generations = digital childhood

20. Using technology is instinctive but not in itself
‘motivating’ for students

21. pedagogy has to be
adaptable to
accomodate different
types and levels of
learner

22. Discussion ?

23. 4. What are the possible next steps for learning?

24. Pedagogy
Technology

25. Giles and musical
overload

27. “I’ve given up trying to keep up but it’s better, I’m just focusing on arranging better
events”
Giles, music promoter

28. You don’t need to know all the stops
but you need to be able to fair-adjust

29. habits and key ‘big’ skills

30. Howard Rheingold on media litercies
http://vimeo.com/5659525
#1 Attention
#2 Participation
#3 Collaboration
#4 Network Savvy
#5 Critical Consumption
#1 Global awareness
#2 Information
processing
#3 Self-directed

31. Traditional Contemporary
schooling schools
Factory/ industry model Slow shift towards
class rank inquiry based learning
delivered curriculum assessment for learning
transmission fixed rubrics and criteria
textbook focus teacher guided
fixed curriculum group tasks
teacher led

32. http://video.google.com/videoplay?
docid=-4126240905912531540#

34. Future schools
self-directed teachers guiding, provoking
peer-mentoring co-conspirators
essential literacies complex not complicated
mutual inquiry

35. Are the ‘geeked out’ and highly web-
connected guilty of painting a subjective
even idealised picture here?
Stephen Downes: National Research Council, Institute for
Information Technology, Canada

36. “Here's my problem with your ideology, Stephen,
which appears to me to be even more radical than
constructivism and tries not only to describe or
defend a new epistemology, but appears to disrupt
social systems as well, in the name of some putative
technocommunism that will reign supreme on the
Internet with everybody working for nothing and
getting everything for free and living happily ever
after.”
catfitz on Stephen’s blog

37. Predicts technology will
break the pattern of failed
school changes and push
schools into a new
paradigm.
Clayton Christensen
Harvard Business School

38. Where next for
learning spaces and
schools?

39. Digital Allotments

40. Images (all from flickr)
Trailing Above North Cascades National Park in a Meteor Shower by Fort Photo
Happy Spaceman (Loves Engrish) by Network Osaka
Road Block by giugesco
Shadow Man on the Bakerloo line by Semi-detached
The Things You Own, End Up Owning You by Willie Chiang