Realize > Now Adapt

From a presentation on new media and "digital natives" at Penn State:

1. Media and gadgets are ubiquitous parts of everyday life
2. New gadgets allow people to enjoy media, gather information, and carry on communication anywhere and any time.
3. The internet (especially broadband) is at the center of the revolution
4. Multi-tasking becomes a way of life
5. Ordinary citizens have a chance to be publishers, movie makers, artists, song creators, and story tellers
6. Everything will change even more in the coming years


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As always, I am happy to find that others are subscribing to these realities. The next big step is for teaching bodies in higher education become acclimatized to these facts. How will that change pedagogy?

What I am seeking is a common resolution to the problem of integrated technology for users at all levels of development and deployment of pedagogies that allow for both traditional methods to remain and effective strategies to emerge for a generation with different learning methods.

I say "development" in place of being "native" or "immigrant". Levels of technological integration into one's life may happen at any age, regardless of date of birth or complexity. My toddler has her own digital camera. Her grandfather uses GPS to measure the distance from his golf ball to the green.

Traditional methods must remain for those students (some I have in my classes) who dislike technology or have not yet reached a level of higher integration.

However, pedagogy must adapt and allow for students who have a different way of learning and communicating due to these realities (listed above).

Making Online Learning Mandatory

Making Online Learning Mandatory: "college trustees want all students to be well versed in independent research and discovery — skills that employers demand, they say — and feel that online education is one way to accomplish that."

"no iPod left behind"

Michigan's "no iPod left behind" budget proposal - Engadget



Michigan subscribes to the idea of providing content transfer in modes most familiar to the student.

Blogging for Apples - FATE Conference 2007

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Hosted here.

This .mp3 track is downloadable here for your mp3 player.

For use with slides found on the Blogging for Apples blog.

IDEAL Podcast #1 - Interview with Anthony Fontana

Interview with (me) Anthony Fontana, about art, technology, online teaching, and the classroom of the future. Anthony Fontana is an Instructor for the School of Art.

Scroll half way down.

A recent interview I had with the IDEAL Distance Learning Center at Bowling Green State University.

Digital Division, Polychronic Multiplication

On the SLED board recently, someone quoted Robert Benchly who said,

"There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't."

Then I found Kim Flintoff's site: Grip,Fix,Turn which has been examining "the limits of these (the Prensky) metaphors in relation to education."
"While there are ever expanding communities of open-source developers and others resistant to the thrust of monopolising corporations, we cannot assume that students are likely to be a part of that movement."

The idea of a Polychronic Classroom should first and foremost take into account EVERY student, be they Polychronic, Monochronic, or anywhere in between. Take this test and find out where you are on that scale.

I have found many who disagree with Prensky's terms and some who are just glad he used them just to start this discussion. I thank everyone on SLED for their wonderful feedback and insight into this matter.

This idea from the Learning Games Blog and Mark Owens clearly supports the idea of a Polychronic Classroom:
"If people assume that what Prensky states about digital natives to be true - and it turns out to be false - then they might end up delivering teaching that is less well suited to their students than they believe to be the case. "

A Polychronic Classroom must provide multiple channels of content transfer MOST familiar to the student and therefore would allow a monochronic student to function and thrive in a very linear, task oriented manner. It should not force a student to work outside of their normal mode of operation, in which they will learn best. The classroom may only benefit from providing a multimodal approach that incorporates both traditional and technologically savvy approaches to pedagogy.

Perhaps the word polychronic insinuates or defies the idea of a monochronic state, but in theory a monochronic state exists inside a polychronic one.

Don't Be Naive, Native, or Immigrant

After attending the FATE, Foundations in Art: Theory and Education conference this last week I returned home with four resounding words in my head: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Marc Prensky's idea (found here) was repeated at many of the session presentations as a standard for what is happening in today's classrooms. However, there were many, including myself, who found these terms to be dated, negative, and off the mark.

Examining Prensky's original paper, you'll find he was speaking the message of the Polychronic Classroom long before I was:
"instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language."
So remember as you read this that, above all, Prensky is on our team.

However, the term "Digital Native" should actually be "Polychronic". In his 2001 paper, he clearly defines a digital native as a polychronic person. Polychrons have been traditionally defined by culture (Asia, Middle East) and are now being defined (or created) by technology. There is no reason though that any American above the age of 30 could not be a Polychron. And this is where Prensky's idea of digital foreigners is wrong.

Likewise, today's students that have never worked with a computer (or much technology) before reaching college, are more likely to be Monochrons; or the same type of personality that Pensky describes as digital immigrant. They have grown up reading, writing, thinking logically, etc...

I suggest we work to change these terms from words like "native" or "immigrant", which carry negative connotations of being foreign, naive, unaware, and not in control, to terms more akin to what they describe: Polychronic or Monochronic.

After all, aren't we all pioneers and conquerors in some way.? Aren't we driving this boat? Sure, some of my students don't know a world other than the new digital millennium but, that does not mean they will understand the iPhone better than I.