Written by Tony Wagner Co-director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG), Harvard Graduate School of Education
By Tony Wagner Co-director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG), Harvard Graduate School of Education
The Desire to multitask and be constantly Connected to the net and to friends as well as the hunger for immediate results influence how young people today interact with the world -- whether in school or at work or at home or while traveling -- and must be taken into account by both educators and employers. However, the ways in which young people are different today as learners may be the most fundamental change we need to understand as we consider hot to close the global achievement gap. The use of the internet and other digital technology has transformed both what young people learn today and how they learn.
Learning Through Multimedia andConnection to Others
Young adults who've grown up on the net are habituated to multimedia learningexperiences, as opposed to merely interacting with text. According to theOblingers, "Researchers report Net Gen students will refuse to read largeamounts of text, whether it involves a long reading assignment or lengthyinstructions. In a study that altered instructions from a text-basedstep-by-step approach to one that used a graphic layout, refusals to do theassignment dropped and post-test scores increased." My interviewswith students, as well as with their high school and collegeteachers, confirm that students are increasingly impatient with the lecturestyle of learning and the reliance on textbooks for information and crave moreclass discussions.
The Net Generation much prefers doing research on the Internet rather than instacks of library books -- in part, because of the very different experience itoffers. "Prose is supplemented by song. Photographs are accompanied byvideo. Issues are even turned into online polls and discussions. For the NetGen, nearly every part of life is presented in multimedia format," writesCarie Windham. "To keep our attention in the classroom, a similar approachis needed. Faculty must toss aside the dying notion that a lecture andsubsequent reading assignment are enough to teach the lesson. Instead, the NetGeneration responds to a variety of media, such as television, audio,animation, and text."
Once they're on the Internet looking for information, Net Gen students developa vital proficiency in what John Seely Brown calls "informationnavigation." According to Brown, "The real literacy of tomorrowentails the ability to be your own personal reference librarian-to know how tonavigate through confusing, complex information spaces and feel comfortabledoing so. 'Navigation' may well be the main form of literacy for the 21stcentury."
And as UCLAs Jason Frand observes, today's college students wantto be connected to others, as well as to different kinds of informationsources, while they learn. "Students with an information-age mindsetexpect education to emphasize the learning process more than a canon of knowledge.They want to be part of learning communities, with hubs and spokes of learners,rejecting the broadcast paradigm of television (or the note-taker in thelecture hall.)"''
Learning as Discovery
The experience of learning or conducting research on the web is radicallydifferent from that of classroom learning or library research. As we're all nowaware, on the Internet you type a search string, the results of which show youhundreds or thousands of potential information sources-not just text but alsovideo, audio, and graphics. You click on links that, in turn, have other linksyou can follow. You may find the name of a person or book or issue that youwant to learn more about, and so you conduct a new search, which leads you to anew treasure trove of information and images, with countless additional links.It is an active, dynamic, nonlinear, discovery-based process-more liketraveling along a spider web than moving in a straight line from point A topoint B. As John Seely Brown writes: "Most of us experienced formalearning in an authority-based, lecture-oriented school. Now, with incredibleamounts of information available through the web, we find a 'new' kind oflearning assuming pre-eminence -- learning that's discovery based. We are constantlydiscovering new things as we browse through the emergent digital 'libraries.'Indeed, web surfing fuses learning and entertainment, creating'infotainment." In confirming Brown's observation, one young woman in thefocus group I mentioned earlier confessed that she Googles topics for fun:"There’s not a day that goes by that I don't Google something -- anything.It's not even just when I have to Google something for school. I Googleeverything. If I'm bored, I'll Google something about my life."
John Beck and Mitchell Wade have studied the "gamers" -- as the youngpeople who play videogames are called. In their book The Kids Are Alright, theyreport that gamers (who, according to their research, represent 92 percent ofthe teenage population), "learn differently. Their game experience . . .emphasizes independent problem solving and the rapid acquisition of technicalskills, as opposed to sustained attention to the subtleties of Shakespeare orcalculus. James Paul Gee has also studied gamers, and in What Video Games Haveto Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, he writes that "video games makeplayers think like scientists. Game play is built on a cycle of 'hypothesize,probe the world, get a reaction, reflect on the results, reprobe to get betterresults,' a cycle typical of experimental science.
When PJ Blankenhorn directed the Boston Center for Adult Education, she wasdiscussing proposals for new courses with a young staff member. "A fewpeople have asked for a class on how to use PDAS," PJ said. "What doyou think?" The staff person, a young woman in her 20s, stared at my wifein astonishment, finally saying, "Why would anyone need to take a courseto learn that?"
John Seely Brown's observations help us to make sense of this interaction."My generation tends not to want to try things unless or until we alreadyknow how to use them," he writes. "If we don't know how to use someappliance or software, our instinct is to reach for a manual or take a courseor call up an expert. Believe me, hand a manual or suggest a course to15-year-olds and they think you're a dinosaur. They want to turn the thing on,get in there, muck around, and see what works. Today's kids get on the Web andlink, lurk, and watch how other people are doing things, then try it for themselves.
Learning by Creating
New developments on the web are giving young people a set of experiences thatcreate a hunger for more than merely learning through discovery. Web 2.0 -- asit is often called to differentiate web use today from early Internet use,which was primarily as a source of information -- provides an extraordinarynumber of opportunities to exercise one's passion to create. Today, anyone whohas even a rudimentary understanding of how the Internet works can fashion newweb content that will be seen by all users.
Whether it's creating your own web page on MySpace or Facebook or uploadingyour band's music or sharing your photo album or posting a video you just shotwith your cell phone on YouTube or contributing to a Wikipedia entry or writinga blog about what you think or what you've experienced or reviewing a movie, analbum, a product, a service, or a restaurant, web 2.0 is a vast andever-expanding palate for personal creativity and self-expression -- especiallyfor young people growing up today. According to Rosen@ research, the mostcommon activity of MySpace users involves posting new photographs and videos ontheir personal web pages. An astonishing 88 percent of MySpace users have addedphoto or video content to their pages.
Cautions
None of what I have described above is necessarily meant to suggest that thesedevelopments in how young people today interact with the world and learn areall positive. For every upside, there is an equally important caution orconcern. Let's review some of the concerns that have been raised regarding thetrends noted above:
Multitasking and Constantly Connected.
While multi-tasking may be a useful skill and a pleasant diversion whileperforming routine tasks, the practice appears to come at a cost. According toRussell Poldrack, an associate professor of psychology at the University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles, who co-authored a study that examined multitaskingand brain activity: "Multitaskers may not be building the same knowledgethat they would be if they were focusing. While multitasking makes them[college students] feel like they are being more efficient, research suggeststhat there's very little you can do that involves multitasking that you can beas good at when you're not multitasking." Linda Stone agrees. "Likeso many things, in small doses, continuous partial attention can be a veryfunctional behavior. However, in large doses, it contributes to a stressfullifestyle, to operating in crisis management mode, and to a compromised abilityto reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively. In a 24/7, always-onworld, continuous partial attention used as our dominant attention mode contributesto a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and to a sense of beingunfulfilled. We are so accessible, we're inaccessible. " Indeed,young people's connectedness through sites like MySpace and Facebook cansometimes be used in ways that are deeply hurtful. Cyberbullying has become agrowing concern for school administrators. Adult cyberpredators are anotherconcern. As I talked to young people who have collected hundreds of new friendselectronically through Facebook or MySpace, I wondered to what extent theydifferentiate between an electronic friend, whom they have never met and whomay pass out of their lives in a nanosecond, and an in-person friend, with whomone builds trust and shares experiences over time.
Instant Gratification and the Speed of Light.
You'll recall the young man I highlighted earlier in this chapter who observedthat use of fast technologies has "made us less patient, more demanding.We don't want to have to wait for anything." Later during the samefocus-group session, several students expressed concerns about howover-reliance on cell phones and instant messaging may be eroding socialskills. "People don't talk as much face-to-face," one young womansaid. Another added: "You know, when you go to someone's house for dinnerwith their family, you have to know how to talk to them, to interact. I worrythat we may be losing our ability to relate to people who are different than weare."
Learning Through Multimedia and Connection to Others.
The Oblingers, quoted earlier in this chapter, have noted young people'simpatience with text-based learning. Tracy Mitrano, who works in the Office ofInformation Technologies at Cornell University, worries about the ways in which"this generation has been entertained to death." And Susan Metros,who holds a similar position at the University of Southern California and isalso a professor in visual communication, told me that college students today"are media-stimulated, but not necessarily media-literate." Theseresearchers are concerned that young people may be avoiding book learningbecause they've been raised on multimedia that is more entertaining. Metroswent on to point out that being a consumer of multimedia doesn't necessarilymean that one has developed the ability to really understand the media andthink critically about what one is experiencing. Young peoples' preference forlearning with peers may also become problematic when they need to work onsomething alone -- such as a research paper-for long periods of time in order toget the best result.
Learning as Discovery.
This style of learning is much more engaging than other ways of learning, andthere is a great deal of research showing that it leads to a deeperunderstanding of basic concepts in math and science when compared to simplerote memorization. However, not everything can be learned through discovery. Wedon't "discover" the times tables, for example. We have to memorizethem. And while we will better understand the concept of an ecosystem throughobservation and experimentation, we must first know something about basicprocesses such as photosynthesis. Similarly, some basic knowledge in geographyand history, essential for informed citizenship, can be gained only throughmemorization. Finally, the desire to constantly "do" and interactoften comes at the expense of contemplation and reflection -- essential aspectsof both learning and growth.
Learning by Creating.
Quality is also a question in these times, when anyone can throw anything up onthe Internet. Flooded with an ever-expanding torrent of "creative"work coming at them from thousands of websites, how do young people learn todiscern the difference between impulsive forms of self-expression versus worksof art that are the product of training anddiscipline? This is an aspect of what Metros meant by being"media-literate." And Carie Windham worries about the impact of allof the creative shortcuts young people take when they IM each other. "I'veseen some of my brother's messages to his friends, and I have absolutely noclue what he's writing -- which is maybe the point anyway. But he doesn’t knowhow to spell. When I try to tell him that's not the way the word is spelled, hejust says, 'Well, it is in IM.' I was an English major, and I worry that he'llnever know how to use the language correctly."
