The first Key Note speaker at the ULearn Conference was Lee Crockett. You can find out more about him and the organisation he is connect with here and here. He was a dynamic and entertaining speaker who challenged us to consider the fact that we face a world on the move and therefore we face a different student.
Lee challenged us that we are currently in a temporary paradigm paralysis – a paralysis caused by learning and behaviours embedded throughout our life. We get comfortable with one way of doing things and don’t always consider that there is another way.
Our world is getting digitised at a phenomenal rate. He shared the following statistics from an american study…
In 2003 there was an estimated 5 exabyte’s of information on the net.
In 2009 there was an estimated 500 exabyte’s of information on the net. [It would take a stack of books all the way to Pluto 13 times over to hold this amount of information].
We were asked to consider what implications this digitalization progress has on the skills required by our children, our learners? Are we developing our students for this world?
This current generation has grown up in a world where an image on a screen is not for passive interaction but is to be engaged and interacted with. We face a different type of student.
Although todays kids look the same on the outside they look very different on the inside due to digital bombardment. They have hyperlinked mind. Their brains are pliable. Eyes process images 60,000 times faster than text.
Lee described our learners today as having a Digital Learners Learning Style. Research has shown that they prefer…
- Receiving quick releases of information from a range of sources.
- Parallel processing and multi-tasking.
- Processing pictures, sounds, colours and videos before text.
- Random access to hyper-linked multimedia info.
- Network simultaneously with many others.
- To learn just in time.
- Instant gratification and instance rewards.
It has challenged me to consider…
- How do I learn?
- Has my learning style changed in a digital world?
- What learning styles do our classrooms utilise?
- What gets measured at our school?
Le continually challenged us that we face a world on the move. We face a different student.
He commented that digital citizen requires…
- Solution fluency
- Creative fluency
- Information fluency
- Media fluency
- Collaboration fluency
You can access more information about this on the 21st Century Fluency Project website.
I was challenged to consider what barriers I put on people within our learning community to match or relate to my learning style rather that considering how others learn best within a changing world.
It also refined my understanding of this generation of learners. They are not necessary lazy learners due to technology, rather more innovative learners through the use of technology.
Let me know your thoughts.
I was reading an article, "The Lure of Consensus" in the latest Educational Leadership magazine. [www.ascd.org] It was discussing the difficult we have as principal when it comes to keeping everyone happy. In reality, we can't. Our role will always contain a degree of confrontation and conflict. This is often a very draining part of our role. The article emphasised the following points...
