TECHNOLOGICAL MIGRANTS AND TECHNOLOGICAL NATIVES

TECHNOLOGICAL MIGRANTS AND TECHNOLOGICAL NATIVES
Classroom dynamics when teacher/student roles are reversed

David Burns, Associate Professor Zayed University, United Arab Emirates

On a recent trip to the United States, I met a friend for a beer.  We set a date via email.  I called his cell phone when I arrived.  We met and had a terrific time catching up and reminiscing.  It was good to see him.

My colleague and I teach broadcast journalism. The industry itself is intellectually and technologically challenging.  Teaching students both the traditional journalism tenets and the cutting-edge technology that drives the business is even more demanding, but not for reasons you may think.

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On a recent trip to the United States, I met a friend for a beer.  We set a date via email.  I called his cell phone when I arrived.  We met and had a terrific time catching up and reminiscing.  It was good to see him.

My colleague and I teach broadcast journalism. The industry itself is intellectually and technologically challenging.  Teaching students both the traditional journalism tenets and the cutting-edge technology that drives the business is even more demanding, but not for reasons you may think. I discovered this summer (although I had suspected for a few years now) that I am quickly becoming a transistor in a nanotech world.  Despite years of keeping pace with technological upgrades, students today are far more technologically savvy than I. 

Researcher Carles Monereo would call my students “Technological Natives.” They possess “virtual minds” since they have used technology their whole lives.  He says for them using today’s tech gadgets is as “natural as speech itself.”  Conversely, Monereo calls people like me, “Technological Migrants” since we had to bridge the gap from the analog to the digital world.  Now that we are all in this digital world, what value is my version 1.0 knowledge to my version 6.0 students’ minds?  The answer is: I can be quite valuable if I adapt my teaching style to the way today’s students think.

            Computer scientist Alan Kay once quipped, "Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born." As one of the last broods of Baby Boomers, there was quite a bit of technology around when I was born in 1963.  At one time, I would have been considered a Technological Native.  I learned to edit on film beds, transitioned to clunky video machines, and then to today’s non-linear systems.  I used one of the last vacuum-tube cameras and one of the first computer chip cameras. I played Pong and owned a Walkman. I wrote my Master’s thesis using WorldPerfect 1.0 and an IBM PC junior (comparing VHS to Betamax VCR systems) and had an electronic mail address that more closely resembled a complex algorithm than my “snail mail” postal address. In other words, as Marc Prensky, a designer of educational video games explains, I speak the digital language but with a heavy accent.   Today, medical researchers think my Generation Y students’ brains may actually be wired differently than mine because of the technology they encountered in their formative years.  Dr. Bruce D. Berry, of Baylor College of Medicine, is researching how today’s technology creates different cognitive linkages in the brain, and therefore maps this young generation’s brains differently than mine.  Put simply, the brains of my generation, growing up in the United States, were honed by Captain Kangaroo, three TV channels, and the Etch-A-Sketch.  Our brains likely developed far differently than my students’ brains that had Where In the World Is Carmen San Diego, 300 TV channels, and the video game Myst for cognitive development. Prensky says that Digital Natives not only like to process information quickly, “they like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. [And] they prefer games to “serious” work.”  In other words, they demand a completely different learning experience than I had and that I was trained to deliver. This summer, as a faculty member for the Salzburg Global Seminar’s “Academy on Media and Global Change,” I called upon every tool in my techy toolbox just to stay four steps behind my classroom full of the world’s brightest Generation Y’ers.  I was to help them create an online media literacy curriculum for their generation. And that was just their morning assignment.  In the afternoon, they tackled two “big idea” issues – terrorism and climate change.  On a technological level, I felt like the pace car among NASCAR engines. These students know how to maximize their computers’ potential. I saw students with at least six software applications running simultaneously as they effortlessly moved data from one to the next. They would then forward their ideas to their teammates using flash drives and iPods for feedback.  I may now be more Cro-Magnon Man than Tech Boy, but what keeps me relevant is my contextualized knowledge of the world, my ability to critically analyze large amounts of information and my knowledge of how people learn and how learning has changed with technology. To me, the ability to analyze information is a critical skill for young people to learn, but that takes time and experience. I hope I helped these students develop a strategic virtual mind; the ability to evaluate the veracity and utility of the gigabytes of information they could access.  My value-added was my ability to question what information was valid, manipulated or biased, unreliable or just plain vacuous.  Having these tools enable them to adapt when the next wave of technology engulfs them. I also served as the protector for the intellectual property of authors whose works and ideas made it to the students’ websites.  Today’s free-flow of information exchange, music downloading and video-sharing websites – like YouTube – have confused the tech native’s logic board a bit, and that is where old-fashioned ethics plays a role. Maybe most importantly, I learned how to stay out of their way.  My job was not to lecture. My job was to guide discovery through mentoring.  We both learned from each other. My students helped me open a Facebook account so we could stay in touch. I have been dipping my toe into this social networking pool and see both its usefulness and its banality.  

I was recently offered an electronic beer by one of my Salzburg students on Facebook.  He wrote on my wall.  I poked him. We caught up and reminisced.  It was good to “see” him.  However, I still haven’t figured out how to order an electronic beer for him.  I am sure it is my accent getting in the way.