The articles in this series over the last two weeks talked about technology and competence. How do these topics relate with our students? What are they up to these days? Are they truly competent with the technology? Productive
They can type faster than I can. They communicate with more correspondents each day than most of us do. They enjoy access to more information from the mobile phone in their pocket than we have in the entire school library. And they can find it faster. If Madonna's song was released at 10 o'clock, it's on their iPod by 10:15. They are competitive -- if they can do it with less work, or in less time, they will. Today's students are very productive people.
Communicative
They correspond with more people, in more forms, about more subjects, than most of us. The average student spends 23 hours per week online (and fewer than 20 hours in class.) They know how to collaborate to make a decision or solve a problem, especially when the group is diverse and dispersed. And they can do it virtually, in many cases sight unseen. They use their little technologies to form teams to get something done. (Why do gang members carry pagers?) They love to communicate.
Resourceful
They know how to find things out. Ask any one of them to look up the latest sports scores, the most recent celebrity sighting, the best bargains at the store, the best brand of HDTV, or the most effective college, and they can go online and find the answer. In no time. With accuracy. They can tell you exactly where they are (by precise latitude and longitude.) And they can calculate the shortest route to where they want to be. Not by the stars, but by the Internet. They are effective researchers.
Mediatric
You know that the next topic is media. Here there is no question. We know they watch TV six hours a day, listen to the radio for two or three, enjoy music anytime anywhere, take photographs, and read magazines. More and more of them create video and produce podcasts. Our typical student fears not the media.
Publishing
While most of their interaction with the media is as a consumer (often uncritical, but a consumer nonetheless), they can also use the media to express their ideas. They write and produce video. They take pictures that they post on Facebook of Flickr for their friends to find. They compose music. They use their computers to write stories, create collages, architect environments, and design clothes. Kindergartners in Broward County, Florida, author books to help them learn to read. On their computers. They are publishers.
The problem is that our students focus their considerable skills, amplified by the light of the new technologies, on what most of us would consider trivial and mindless entertainments. The brightest lights illuminate the basest ideas. Ay, there's the rub. And, there's a task for the teacher. More about that next time.
