Re: [DDN] Are digital natives analog immigrants?
At 6:27 PM -0800 12/18/05, Dr. Steve Eskow wrote: A growing body of literature argues that, in Steven Jo The digital natives may be analog immigrants If this is so, if there are several grains of truth here, what should our colleges and universities do about the New Illiteracy? Two possibilities quickly suggest themselves. The first: acknowledge that print literacy is dissolving and eroding and morphing into something else, and convert instruction and instructional media to that something else. The second: acknowledge that print literacy is the central literacy needed by those who function in the 21st century, and turn the attention of our best minds to the problem of how to save and enhance it. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] A good piece. What, Steve, are YOUR recommendations? e. -- John W. Hibbs [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.bfranklin.edu/johnhibbs ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
RE: [DDN] Are digital natives analog immigrants?
John Hibbs asks for my recommendations for dealing with the New Illiteracy-if indeed there is a new illiteracy. Perhaps what we most need is some new conversational spaces that are not dominated either by the TechnoUtopians, who are sure that they have been given the answer to ignorance and poverty in the form of the computer, and TechnoLuddites, who see the new technologies as the source of the world's ills. The first group has its standardized answer: the new machines will do the job, and when they don't it's because the teachers (or the politicians, or the social workers) haven't been trained; the second group knows that ignorance and poverty can be traced to the machines that are turning learning and teachers into mass produced commodities. A third conversational space not dominated either by true believers or true disbelievers. We need, too, I think, to distinguish between our dealings with those on the two sides of the digital divide. Those without cell phones and computers who cannot use these devices to join the human conversation, or to connect to the information that will help them to learn and earn, should be helped to get them. Simple justice requires that continuing effort to narrow the divide. Those in the rich countries like the US I hope will begin to realize that we are entering a new phase of our love affair with the new technologies. History teaches us that each new communication technology begins a new romance, and part of that romance is the dream that the new device will usher in a period of transformation of learning, and of peace and prosperity. The telegraph, the radio, the cinema, television: the record is full of such dreams. Thomas Edison prophesying that the movies would make ignorance obsolete was typical of the belief in the revolutionary potential of a new medium, and the anthologies have hundreds of such visions. The new visionaries rarely talk now of books, or radio, or television: the new romances are built around the computer and the cell phone and the video game. So: perhaps the first thing we might do is consider learning something from history. We have had several decades of romancing about the computer-and regardless of how we push at the statistics of the recent studies of youth and adult literacy in the US it will be hard to argue that the revolution in learning promised by the romantics has occurred. If we are able to get beyond the dream and romance era, we might then begin to think about how to create new educational forms that incorporate the new tools and the best of the old tools and pedagogies, and test out the effectiveness of these designs in practice before we urge them on the world. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of John Hibbs Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 8:02 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussiongroup Subject: Re: [DDN] Are digital natives analog immigrants? At 6:27 PM -0800 12/18/05, Dr. Steve Eskow wrote: A growing body of literature argues that, in Steven Jo The digital natives may be analog immigrants If this is so, if there are several grains of truth here, what should our colleges and universities do about the New Illiteracy? Two possibilities quickly suggest themselves. The first: acknowledge that print literacy is dissolving and eroding and morphing into something else, and convert instruction and instructional media to that something else. The second: acknowledge that print literacy is the central literacy needed by those who function in the 21st century, and turn the attention of our best minds to the problem of how to save and enhance it. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] A good piece. What, Steve, are YOUR recommendations? e. -- John W. Hibbs [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.bfranklin.edu/johnhibbs ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
RE: [DDN] Are digital natives analog immigrants?
Steve and John's exchange raises a number of critical issues that need addressment: 1)The studies seem to show that in order to fully participate in the conversation, one must possess the language, whether spoken or written. Thus, in the developed world, mixing by economics rather than race or national origin seems to work best in integration. As far as developed vs developing, again, its not the technology but the ability to communicate and to be able to sit at the table and speak/write the language of diplomacy or idea exchange. 2) Educational institutions, particularly the post secondary institutions have lost their credibility as John Hibbs notes, indirectly. They no longer command the signatory positions but have become part of the K-16 system and are seen as a requirement, a continuation of the K-12 system in order to graduate. The question of whether the institutions are medallion or less than medallion plays a signficant roll, hence wealth and access becomes important. A recruiter once said that when they wanted a line manager they went to the large public universities and when they wanted potential top level management they went to the medallion institutions. Indeed, economics plays a role much as the separation in the European schools where students are channeled into vocational and higher education tracks. I am not certain that the digital divide reduction changes either the roles of the graduates or their social/economic mobility except against those who don't rise to a grade 16 certificate. 3) Corporations, at least in the US, have internal universities, many of which could qualify to offer degrees. There is several hundred Billion spent/year, much of which is in courses that are equivalent to those offered in universities. In essence, they have biteen the bullet and decided that they need to pick up where the conventional education system has failed. As steve points out, its not the technology pro/con but the purpose and will towards education as opposed to certification, a point that john would seem to agree upon. Closing the digital divide to zero is a matter of perception. Give everyone a free computer and full access to the Internet and we get the same problem that basically says that if you took all the world's wealth and gave it equally to every person on earth, at the end of some period, a short one, that wealth would have redistributed regardless of the ruels of the game. thoughts? tom abeles Original Message: - From: Dr. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 09:42:00 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [DDN] Are digital natives analog immigrants? John Hibbs asks for my recommendations for dealing with the New Illiteracy-if indeed there is a new illiteracy. Perhaps what we most need is some new conversational spaces that are not dominated either by the TechnoUtopians, who are sure that they have been given the answer to ignorance and poverty in the form of the computer, and TechnoLuddites, who see the new technologies as the source of the world's ills. The first group has its standardized answer: the new machines will do the job, and when they don't it's because the teachers (or the politicians, or the social workers) haven't been trained; the second group knows that ignorance and poverty can be traced to the machines that are turning learning and teachers into mass produced commodities. A third conversational space not dominated either by true believers or true disbelievers. We need, too, I think, to distinguish between our dealings with those on the two sides of the digital divide. Those without cell phones and computers who cannot use these devices to join the human conversation, or to connect to the information that will help them to learn and earn, should be helped to get them. Simple justice requires that continuing effort to narrow the divide. Those in the rich countries like the US I hope will begin to realize that we are entering a new phase of our love affair with the new technologies. History teaches us that each new communication technology begins a new romance, and part of that romance is the dream that the new device will usher in a period of transformation of learning, and of peace and prosperity. The telegraph, the radio, the cinema, television: the record is full of such dreams. Thomas Edison prophesying that the movies would make ignorance obsolete was typical of the belief in the revolutionary potential of a new medium, and the anthologies have hundreds of such visions. The new visionaries rarely talk now of books, or radio, or television: the new romances are built around the computer and the cell phone and the video game. So: perhaps the first thing we might do is consider learning something from history. We have had several decades of romancing about the computer-and regardless of how we push at the statistics of the recent studies of youth and adult literacy in the US it will be hard to argue
Re: [DDN] Are digital natives analog immigrants?
I am taking key words and phrases from what Dr. Steve Eskow wrote in order to put my reply in context - please see the original for exactly what he was saying. : Perhaps ... need .. new conversational spaces ..not dominated .. by.. TechnoUtopians... and TechnoLuddites... We need.. to distinguish between our dealings with those on the two sides of the digital divide. Those without cell phones and computers who cannot use these devices to join the human conversation... should be helped to get them. Simple justice requires that continuing effort to narrow the divide. Those in the rich countries like the US I hope will begin to realize that we are entering a new phase... begin to think about how to create new educational forms... It is so encouraging to find people expressing opinions like this. A few years back if I mentioned ICTs and teachers I could expect either a TechnoUtopian or TechnoLuddite response - which made it hard to try to explain some of our hopes regarding rural Nigeria, ICTs, and InfoCentres or Community Learning Centres (CLCs). Now it seems there is more of a middle ground for discussion. I have many hopes about this. I hope that ~ The middle ground will open up ~ The people who move into it from the rich countries will have a genuine commitment to including people on both sides of the digital divide. ~ Those in the bandwidth-rich rich countries will be ready to read/listen and learn as well as write/speak and teach. ~ The bandwidth-rich people will be patient enough to work within the constraints of the more cumbersome communication systems of bandwidth challenged people on the other side of the digital divide. ~ ICTs will enable people from both sides to rub minds and share their expertise, and explore new educational solutions (and other solutions) - ones that will fit real conditions and solve real pressing. problems. In CAWDnet we have learnt a few lessons about crossing the digital divide, which may be of interest to those who do want to include bandwidth-challenged people in discussions on the middle ground. Throughout our five years of existence, we have always needed to communicate beyond the edge of the digital divide - beyond the city cyber cafes, beyond the mobile phone networks, and beyond the end of the effective formal postal service. ICTs have always enabled us to link from one continent to another - from the UK to Nigeria - i.e. from London to Ibadan, or Lagos, or Jos. But we needed to communicate, beyond the cyber cafes in the cities, with people in rural locations like Ago-Are, Okeho, and Bayan Loco. It was very difficult at first, but it is getting easier. At first we had to be very patient, and to accept the need for someone to travel between the rural area and the city, with its cyber cafes. Sometimes the person sending the email did the travelling. Sometimes it was an intermediary - an information courier. By the standards of the connected community it was excruciatingly slow. However compared to the previous method (waiting until someone - or a series of people - could physically carry a letter from country to country by hand) it was a breakthrough. Now things are easier.. VSATs in rural areas mean that emails are more frequent. Synchronous online communication between UK and rural Nigeria is almost a daily happening within CAWDnet. Even so, contacts are not easy. Online costs (including fuel for generators) can be prohibitive. Distance is still an issue for many of our contacts, and so we still need to arrange for motor-cycle couriers and other work-arounds - but the road journeys that are needed are much shorter now than they were five years ago. I emphasise Nigeria because it has the locations I know best, so I can help people to establish contacts, but there are other people with contacts elsewhere. If people want to communicate it is much easier now than ever before, the technology is spreading out from the cities, and the potential human networks are all around - through people in the Diaspora linking with people back home. Communicating with rural areas isn't easy, especially if it is being done on a shoestring, but it is increasingly possible. I like Steve's phrase the human conversation and his desire to help people on the other side of the digital divide to join in. In ICT there have been great advances - but sometimes that emphasis has been too much on the Technology and not enough on the people with their needs for Information and Communication. Let's move to the middle ground. Pam Pamela McLean CAWDnet convenor [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.cawd.info ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
[DDN] Are digital natives analog immigrants?
A growing body of literature argues that, in Steven Jones' words, EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR US. Television is good for us: makes us smarter. James Paul Gee studies WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT LEARNING AND LITERACY, and concludes that they have a lot to teach us. And yet... And yet there is the possibility that the ability of college graduates to read complex materials is declining sharply. Or so says the recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy. If the Assessment's findings hold up, the remaining question is, of course: Is the ability to read complex texts important in the 21st century? And if it is, are the digital natives well equipped for survival, much less leadership, in the 21st century? One popular and increasingly influential retailer of the thesis that the new generation of cell phone and iPod and computer communicators is a new breed of human with facilities adapted to work and citizenship in the 21st century is Mark Prensky Here is Prensky: Natives and Immigrants Why do I call these young computer enthusiasts and organizational activists digital natives? Think about the extraordinary cumulative digital experiences of each of these future business, military, and government leaders: an average of close to 10,000 hours playing video games; more than 200,000 e-mails and instant messages sent and received; nearly 10,000 hours of talking, playing games, and using data on cell phones; more than 20,000 hours spent watching TV (much of it jump-cut-laden MTV); almost 500,000 commercials seen - all before they finished college. At most, they've logged only 5,000 hours of book reading. This generation is better than any before at absorbing information and making decisions quickly, as well as at multitasking and parallel processing. In contrast, people age 30 or older are digital immigrants because they can never be as fluent in technology as a native who was born into it. You can see it in the digital immigrants' accent - whether it is printing out e-mails or typing with fingers rather than thumbs. Have you ever noticed that digital natives, unlike digital immigrants, don't talk about information overload? Rather, they crave more information. Multitasking means to Prensky the ability to IM with friends while attending to a college lecture or reading a book. Or getting all that a television documentary has to offer while attending to the captions scrolling below. College faculty throughout the US, and perhaps elsewhere where the new media are ubiquitous, will testify to the difficulty the digital natives have with the printed word. They resist reading even moderately difficult texts, and often refuse to buy textbooks, sometimes acknowledging that the words on the pages make little or no sense to them. The digital natives may be analog immigrants If this is so, if there are several grains of truth here, what should our colleges and universities do about the New Illiteracy? Two possibilities quickly suggest themselves. The first: acknowledge that print literacy is dissolving and eroding and morphing into something else, and convert instruction and instructional media to that something else. The second: acknowledge that print literacy is the central literacy needed by those who function in the 21st century, and turn the attention of our best minds to the problem of how to save and enhance it. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
RE: [DDN] Are digital natives analog immigrants?
Hi Steve Actually, Marc has a lot more to say if you google his several web sites. Never-the-less, your point is well made. The question that one must ask, of course, is whether the current print literacy has been driven off the deep end by scholars dancing on the heads of pins. One routinely hears the complaint that legal documents are designed to obfuscate with clever word smithing when the rhetoric and intent don't mesh as we have seen with the Enrons of the world. Academic texts and cultural studies seem to mince words to the joy of the academics but seen to be irrelevant to those who are starving. The same with the WTO and neo-classical economics with its addition of numeracy. One has to remember that somebody is programing these visual worlds and the folks behind the games such as Sim City are not without social consciousness and philosophy. So, maybe there are valid reasons for the rejection of the analog and its arcane presentations? thoughts? tom abeles Original Message: - From: Dr. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 18:27:07 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [DDN] Are digital natives analog immigrants? A growing body of literature argues that, in Steven Jones' words, EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR US. Television is good for us: makes us smarter. James Paul Gee studies WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT LEARNING AND LITERACY, and concludes that they have a lot to teach us. And yet... And yet there is the possibility that the ability of college graduates to read complex materials is declining sharply. Or so says the recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy. If the Assessment's findings hold up, the remaining question is, of course: Is the ability to read complex texts important in the 21st century? And if it is, are the digital natives well equipped for survival, much less leadership, in the 21st century? One popular and increasingly influential retailer of the thesis that the new generation of cell phone and iPod and computer communicators is a new breed of human with facilities adapted to work and citizenship in the 21st century is Mark Prensky Here is Prensky: Natives and Immigrants Why do I call these young computer enthusiasts and organizational activists digital natives? Think about the extraordinary cumulative digital experiences of each of these future business, military, and government leaders: an average of close to 10,000 hours playing video games; more than 200,000 e-mails and instant messages sent and received; nearly 10,000 hours of talking, playing games, and using data on cell phones; more than 20,000 hours spent watching TV (much of it jump-cut-laden MTV); almost 500,000 commercials seen - all before they finished college. At most, they've logged only 5,000 hours of book reading. This generation is better than any before at absorbing information and making decisions quickly, as well as at multitasking and parallel processing. In contrast, people age 30 or older are digital immigrants because they can never be as fluent in technology as a native who was born into it. You can see it in the digital immigrants' accent - whether it is printing out e-mails or typing with fingers rather than thumbs. Have you ever noticed that digital natives, unlike digital immigrants, don't talk about information overload? Rather, they crave more information. Multitasking means to Prensky the ability to IM with friends while attending to a college lecture or reading a book. Or getting all that a television documentary has to offer while attending to the captions scrolling below. College faculty throughout the US, and perhaps elsewhere where the new media are ubiquitous, will testify to the difficulty the digital natives have with the printed word. They resist reading even moderately difficult texts, and often refuse to buy textbooks, sometimes acknowledging that the words on the pages make little or no sense to them. The digital natives may be analog immigrants If this is so, if there are several grains of truth here, what should our colleges and universities do about the New Illiteracy? Two possibilities quickly suggest themselves. The first: acknowledge that print literacy is dissolving and eroding and morphing into something else, and convert instruction and instructional media to that something else. The second: acknowledge that print literacy is the central literacy needed by those who function in the 21st century, and turn the attention of our best minds to the problem of how to save and enhance it. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com
