Reinventing Learning For the Always-on Generations - Ian Jukes @ESHA October 18, 2018 - ESHA 2018
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Reinventing Learning For
the Always-on Generations
Ian Jukes @ESHA
@ijukes October 18, 2018
Page 2 Reinventing Learning For the AOG Table of Contents Introduction -----------------------------------------------------------------------------3 Students Today Are Different ----------------------------------------------------------4 Attributes of the Digital Generations --------------------------------------------------6 Attribute 1: EyeWorld -------------------------------------------------------------------7 An Important Message----------------------------------------------------------------10 Do’s and Don’ts -----------------------------------------------------------------------14 Strategies That Work -----------------------------------------------------------------14 Attribute 2: Zig-Zag vs. Fast-pattern Reading --------------------------------------15 Fast Pattern Reading -----------------------------------------------------------------16 The Reverse S-Pattern Reading -----------------------------------------------------17 F-Pattern & Reverse S-Pattern Suggestions ----------------------------------------19 Strategies That Work ------------------------------------------------------------------19 Attribute 3: Learning Must Be Fun ---------------------------------------------------20 Strategies That Work ------------------------------------------------------------------26 Turning the Corner & Heading For Home -------------------------------------------27 Learners Are Different! ----------------------------------------------------------------29 Square Peg, Round Hole -------------------------------------------------------------32 The Fundamental Question -----------------------------------------------------------33 More Resources -----------------------------------------------------------------------35 This handout reviews 3 of the 10 learning attributes of the digital generations that are identified in the book Reinventing Learning for the Always-on Generation: Strategies and Apps That Work by Ian Jukes, Ryan Schaaf, and Nicky Mohan. The 10 attributes are: 1. Kids Are Different 2. A Need For Speed 3. The Multitasking Mindset 4. EveWorld 5. Everyone Connected to Everyone and Everything 6. Fast-pattern Reading 7. Just-in-case Learning 8. Instant vs. Deferred Gratification 9. Transfluency 10. Learning Must Be Fun
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Link to the ESHA Evernote Folder: http://bit.ly/ESHA2018
Introduction
We cannot limit our children's learning to our own, for they are born & they will
live in a different time than us. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
We face a world on the move. We face a world that has not only fundamentally changed, but
continues to change in incomprehensible, accelerating ways. As a result of these dramatic
changes, we are dealing with a very different kind of student - a student whose experiences,
expectations, and assumptions about the world they live in that are compelling the older
generations to completely rethink teaching, learning, and assessment.
That’s what we want to focus on today - we’ve spent the past 20 years of our lives studying
and writing about the digital generations. In this handout we want to briefly talk about
change - change and our world - change and our children - change and its consequences for
learners, for educators, and for education. We want to talk about change and the new digital
landscape.
In 2012, Ted McCain and I wrote a book entitled Understanding the Digital Generation. The book
was based in large part on more than 1000 interviews with learners between the ages of 5
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and 25 about how they viewed the world. In 2016, my wife Nicky Mohan, our friend Ryan
Schaaf and I followed up UDG up by writing Reinventing Learning For the Always-On
Generation: Strategies and Apps That Work. And in December, 2018, our newest book, A Brief
History of the Future of Education will be released.
Students Today Are Different
We’d like to summarize some of what we wrote in those books. What they, and many more
books just like them - and what a great deal of academic research is saying - is that as parents,
as citizens, and particularly as educational leaders, what we must understand is that while, on
the outside, learners today pretty much look the same as we did when we were growing up,
this belies the fact that on the inside - neurologically - today’s digital generations are very
different than previous generations.
This difference is not just because they physically mature years earlier than learners did even
15 years ago. It’s not just because of the clothes they choose to wear, or the clothes they
choose not to wear. It’s not just because they might want to colour their hair or style it
differently than we do. It’s not just because of the music they listen to, or the games they play.
It’s not just because of the way they talk, or how they act, or what they say, or how they
communicate. And it’s certainly not just because for many of them, prehistoric refers to
anything that predates the Internet.
“...as parents, as citizens, and particularly as educational leaders, what we must
understand is that while, on the outside, learners today pretty much look the same
as we did when we Were growing up - this belies the fact that on the inside -
neurologically - today’s digital generations are completely different than previous
generations…”
Cultural and generational biases have always influenced the way older people perceive how
young people think and spend their time. That’s because many of the older generations
remember a time when people didn't spend hours of their day staring into glowing screens.
Phones never left the house. Television put itself to sleep at night. And computers were just
fancy typewriters. Technology didn't come with you to the playground, school or on a family
vacation. Information was passed mouth-to-ear, scribe-to-scribe; it was changed in the
process; there was little sense of ownership and authorship.
The challenge that the older generations face is that young people have no experience with
the way things used to be. Life is simply what they experience now - and they run with it. The
problem is that what they are experiencing is a radically different life than their parents and
teachers experienced when they grew up. The younger generations are different because of
digital bombardment. They’re different because they’ve grown up in a world of pervasive and
chronic exposure to digital experiences - exposure that primarily happens to them outside of
Page 5 Reinventing Learning For the AOG school hours. Our examination of the research, and our conversations with learners shows that digital bombardment is literally wiring and rewiring learners’ brains on an ongoing basis. And in particular, it’s enhancing their visual memory, visual processing, and visual learning skills. As a result of the research and the interviews and the observations, what we're now coming to understand is that our learners - our children - the ones who on the outside look pretty much the same as we did growing up - on the inside - neurologically - are processing and utilizing information in a very different manner than older generations do. As a result, one of the greatest challenges that the older generations face at this time, both personally - as parents and citizens - and particularly as educators - is that many of us continue to struggle trying to come to terms with, and engaging with the digital generations. Why are we struggling? Because almost none of the things the younger generations are regularly experiencing today are things that we, the older generations, experienced when we were growing up. Now there’s a lot more research and science behind all this, but we only have a limited amount of time. In this handout, we will review 3 of the 10 attributes examined in Reinventing Learning For the Always-on Generation. At the end of the handout, we will provide access to
Page 6 Reinventing Learning For the AOG some amazing resources that will allow you to go much deeper into this topic should you choose. Attributes of the Digital Generations So, what we want to do is cut to the chase. Here’s what we understand about the learning attributes of the digital generations. The way we’re gong to do this is first summarize what we know about digital learners’ learning styles and learning preferences. Then, we're going to compare those learning styles and learning preferences to the traditional teaching styles and teaching preferences that continue to be used by many teachers - both young and old alike - in classrooms today. Then we’ll briefly discuss what these differences mean in terms of teaching, learning, and assessment of that learning - and then, we’ll suggest some of the strategies and activities that can be used to interest and engage the digital generations. It’s important to acknowledge right up front that the digital learning attributes we will describe don’t apply equally to every student. There are obviously a wide range of behaviours that are affected by factors such as culture, socio-economics, and personal experiences - but we will also tell you that we have traveled to some of the richest and poorest places on the planet - and the behaviours we're about to describe are behaviours we’ve seen just about everywhere we go.
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Attribute 1: EyeWorld
“... digital learners prefer processing pictures, sounds, colour, and video before text
while many traditional educators continue to prefer to provide text before pictures,
colour, sounds, & video.”
For generations, images were typically static illustrations, and black and white photos,
images, or diagrams that accompanied the text. These images were intended to provide
some clarification or expansion for the text after the fact. For example, how many of you
remember reading an encyclopedia, a textbook, or workbook when you were a child? Back
then, the primary information was provided in the text, and the images were merely
intended to complement or enhance the text.
But for digital learners, the relationship has been almost entirely reversed. People get
exhausted from consuming plain black text on a white background all the time. It makes
sense that we crave color and design, because we’re programmed to. Beyond that, for the
younger generations, the role of text is to provide more detail for something that is first
experienced as an image or video.
That’s why YouTube is typically so much more engaging to learners than reading and writing.
YouTube has been intentionally packaged for the younger generations’ consumption.
YouTube is visual, social, diverse, mobile, and adaptive - it breaks ideas down into bite-sized
chunks in ways that promote consumption. And more than 800 hours of video are uploaded
to YouTube every minute of every day. There are more than 1.2 billion video clips available -
and most of them are about learning something.
In his amazing book Brain Rules, developmental molecular biologist John Medina’s research
says that almost half of our brain is involved in visual processing, and that half is pretty good
at what it does - that we can make sense of a visual in less than 1/10 of a second; and that
people can remember the content of more than 2,500 pictures with at least 90% accuracy 72
hours after exposure to those images even though they only see each picture for about 10
seconds.
Page 8 Reinventing Learning For the AOG Let us repeat what we just said. There’s a 90% recall of the content of 2,500 images, 72 hours after exposure with only 10 seconds of exposure to each picture. Recall rates of those same 2,500 pictures one year later are still an impressive 63% of the content of those 2,500 pictures. But the same research says that when new information is presented orally with no image or video present - for example, if we made a presentation without including a visual element and just talked at you - 72 hours later, you - the readers - would typically only be able to recall about 10% of what was presented. Medina’s research demonstrates that after just 72 hours, learners will remember only about 10% of the content of a lecture. He says this is clear evidence that the traditional stand and deliver lecture method is just not effective. However - and this is very significant - Medina’s research shows that the percentage of information retained goes up from 10% to 65% if an image is added to the new content. In other words, a picture may not be worth a thousand words, but it certainly helps. Let us explain what’s happening here. Since childhood, the digital generations have been continuously bombarded by television, videos, and computer games that put colourful, high-quality, highly expressive, realistic graphics - they put multi-sensory experiences - sight,
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sound, touch - soon even smell, taste and 3D - in front of learners with little or no
accompanying text. They are accustomed to receiving information presented in visual,
auditory, or multimedia formats. They read text only as a last resort.
“... When we combine visual messages with verbal communication you increase the
retention rate of content to nearly 50 percent – the use of visuals improves learning
outcomes by about 400%.”
As a result, to the digital generations, images and video are powerful enough on their own to
communicate the message to and for them. And for the younger generations, the role of
words increasingly is merely to complement the content of the images. The result of this
pervasive and chronic digital bombardment has been to considerably sharpen the Digital
Generations' visual abilities. When we combine visual messages with verbal communication
you increase the retention rate of content to nearly 50 percent – the use of visuals improves
learning outcomes by about 400%.
That’s because the Digital Generations are a highly visually literate group . They are so
exposed to the digital landscape that they think it’s a natural part of their world, so they’re
completely comfortable interpreting and conveying information in visual formats. All you
have to do is play a video game against them and get your backside completely kicked to
understand that their visual-spatial skills are so highly developed that Medina’s research
seems to indicate that they have cultivated an almost complete physical interface between
their real and virtual worlds. They are the first generation to be considered fully “Phigital” -
unwilling or unable to distinguish between the physical and digital worlds.
“...They are so exposed to the digital landscape that they think it’s a natural part of
their world, so they’re completely comfortable interpreting and conveying
information in visual formats.”
As a result, the digital generations think they learn more from technology than they learn
from people -- and that's a big problem for schools. The Digital Generations are more likely to
Google answers to pressing questions than they are to ask a human to help them. This trend
of younger people feeling more comfortable learning through screens that they see as part
of themselves rather than learning from people is of particular importance in the world of
education.
A young person’s entire sense of connection and friendship may well be mediated by
screens. If schools don’t adapt and move to a more blended style of instruction, schools and
teachers could continue to see a growing disconnect with our learners and disinterest in
traditional education. The digital generations’ attitudes are forcing teachers to rethink
education. Based on this trend, we need to modify what we do, and we must be ready to
meet our learners where they already are.
Page 10 Reinventing Learning For the AOG Meanwhile, many people from the older generations continue to struggle to understand this because that’s not the world many of us grew up in. We struggle because most of the people reading this, including me and you, were initially paper-trained growing up - we learned from books - we were trained to communicate primarily with words and text. Our learning was linear, logical, left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and beginning-to-end. The digital generations, on the other hand, are light and sound trained, which is an entirely different cognitive process than the older generations experienced growing up. So what implications does the trend of being light and sound trained hold for education and educators? An Important Message Here’s a message that everyone needs to hear regardless of how close you might be to retirement. Most of the people reading this handout grew up communicating with text. That’s why today, most schools continue to focus primarily on learning how to communicate with text. Meanwhile, quite some time ago, in the world outside of school, communicating solely using text was superseded by visual communication. The younger generations have been raised on multimedia. For them, visual communications have become the new standard - visual communications have become the new normal. And things haven’t stopped there - the world has moved even further - beyond visual communication to a new video standard. Learners today are using video production tools that just ten years ago would have cost millions of dollars to buy - but which now are free or inexpensive.
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“... When you combine visual messages with spoken communication you increase
the retention rate of content to nearly 50 percent – the use of visuals improves
learning outcomes by about 400%.”
As a result, video is becoming the preferred channel of communications and it is
fundamentally changing the way we learn and the way we teach . The younger generations’
worlds has fewer words and a greater number of images. Their brains are wired for the fast
delivery of content, data, and images from computers, video games, and the Internet. When
you combine visual messages with spoken communication you increase the retention rate of
content to nearly 50 percent – the use of visuals improves learning outcomes by about
400%.
This is why learners are quickly moving beyond Google to using YouTube. Current research
had demonstrated categorically that unless you’re in the top 10% of readers and writers, you
learn far more quickly and efficiently - and you retain far more information - by watching a
video and then talking about what you’ve learned as opposed to writing an essay about it.
Case in point is the eight-year-old boy who taught himself to drive on YouTube and then
packed his young sister into the car and drove it successfully to McDonald's without incident.
What’s known as picting or pixting - taking pictures and video rather than writing and
reading - is increasingly the literacy of today’s youth. To the younger generations, words are
an add-on - images are primary. In K–12 classrooms, today’s learners spend 90 percent of the
time with text-based materials - and 10 percent of the time with image-based materials.
While outside the K–12 classroom, today’s youth spend 10 percent of the time with text-
based materials - and 90 percent of the time with image-based materials using Snapchat,
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and dozens of other easy to use apps.
As just one small example, about 30 percent of millennials in the United States visit the
Snapchat app 18 times per day - and they spend roughly 30 minutes a day using Snapchat!Page 12 Reinventing Learning For the AOG
And they spend about 10 hours and 39 minutes each day consuming media - or
approximately 65% of their waking hours. The same trends toward visual learning show that
games outperform textbooks in helping learners learn fact-based subjects such as
geography, history, physics, and anatomy, while at the same time games also improve visual
coordination, cognitive speed, and manual dexterity.
That’s why some schools are now opting not to teach handwriting - and they’re letting
learners use digital devices to record their progress using a range of different media. Images
not only make a learning experience more fun, people are more inclined to view screens that
contain pictures. Many learners are completely immersed in the world of full motion video
that they watch for both entertainment and to learn. And as a result, in less than a
generation, many of our learners have moved from simply being viewers or consumers of
media to being prosumers of media - simultaneously consuming and producing media.
“... Modern digital media has fundamentally changed the essential skills we all
need to have to be informed consumers and producers of media in the world today.”
So what's our point? You might not like what we're going to say next, but you need to hear
this. You need to understand that amongst the younger generations, visual communication
is increasingly challenging the supremacy of traditional reading and writing. While reading
and writing will always have a place, in an increasingly visual world, visual communication
and design must be an everyday part of the curriculum. Not just for senior learners - but for
learners at every grade level and in every subject area.Modern digital media has
fundamentally changed the essential skills we all need to have to be informed consumers
and producers of media in the world today. Learners and teachers alike must be able toPage 13 Reinventing Learning For the AOG communicate as effectively in multimedia formats as we, the older generations, were taught to communicate with text and speech when we were growing up. Don’t get us wrong - the 3 R’s are still essential, but in the modern world, traditional literacy is no longer enough. We all need to understand how differently modern readers read digital text from the way the older generations read traditional paper-based text - something we’ll have more to say about in a couple of minutes. As a result both learners and teachers alike need to understand modern information communication skills such as the principles of graphic design as well as how typography shapes thinking - the effective use of colour - the principles of photo composition - sound production techniques - and the fundamentals of video production - not to mention how we use all of these skills to effectively communicate to different audiences. The bottom line is that in the new digital landscape, traditional literacy - traditional reading and writing - is no longer enough. There are new basics of modern communication needed by all of us - not replacing traditional reading and writing...at least not yet - but rather augmenting traditional communications skills. In the very near future - for all of us - expressing ideas by creating a simulation or video is going to be as important if not more important than being able to write an expository essay.
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Do’s and Don’ts
• Use visuals to help clarify complex idea.
• Use visuals that represent people, places, and things.
• Use catchy visuals.
• Use visuals that help viewers make connections and understand new information.
• Use visuals that help viewers relate new information to what they already know.
• Don’t use poor quality visuals, like things that are pixelated, stretched, sized
improperly, or don’t fit in the space.
• Don’t use ugly visuals.
• Don’t use visuals that don’t make a clear connection to the material presented.
• Don’t use irrelevant visuals, like a series of shapes that have no meaning.
Strategies That Work
• Use Google Images to find three (3) pictures that you can use with learners as a visual,
story starter, or discussion starter.
• Find YouTube clips about the water cycle, ancient Egypt, and the Amazon rainforest.
• Discuss with a partner an idea you have for creating a visual slideshow to introduce a
topic or unit in your classroom.
• Create a visual slideshow to develop a topic or unit for your classroom.
• Use Wordle, Tagxedo, TagCrowd, or another tool to create a Tag cloud.
• With a partner, discuss 5 ways to use tag clouds in the classroom.
• Use Animoto to create your own video with music.
• Create a mind map of some tools you like so far from the workshop using Mindomo,
Popplet, Inspiration, or other app.
• Create a short book using Storybird.
• Visit MyHistro and view a historic timeline.
• As you take notes during the workshop, doodle or incorporate some images
associated with the text you have typed or written.Page 15 Reinventing Learning For the AOG
Attribute 2: Zig-Zag vs. Fast-pattern Reading
“...digital readers read in an F or Fast-pattern. Most educators read in a Z or Ziz-
Zig-Zag pattern…”
Images have the ability to quickly portray meaning. It only takes 150 milliseconds for the
brain to process images - and only 100 ms more for the brain to attach meaning to the
image. That’s because the eye processes the content of photographs 60,000 times faster than
the eye processes and interprets the content of text and words. This explains why
infographics are so popular. They’re easy to digest and they’re engaging to viewers.
70% of our body’s sensory receptors are in our eyes and 80% of our information comes
through our eyes. Every second our eyes take in 72 gigabytes of information using 86 billion
neurons to interpret visual data and bring it to life. The bottom line is that the brain is much
more designed for processing visual information than anything else which explains why,
regardless of age, we’re all at our center inherently visual learners. It’s completely natural that
today’s digital generations might be far more inclined toward visual processing than text
processing because our brains are designed that way.
What’s been recently discovered is that because of digital bombardment, digital readers’ eyes
move in a very different way than traditional readers’ eyes when it comes to scanning a page,
reading materials, and searching for specific information. The eyes of traditional readers
unconsciously find an intersection approximately 1/3 of the way down the page and 1/3 of
the page in from the side - the Greeks 2,300 years ago called this intersection the Golden
Mean.
Then traditional readers started reading the page for information in what’s called a Z-curve
or Zig-Zag pattern. A simple z-curve if there was only a small amount of information on the
page - and a complex Z curve if there’s lots of information on the page. The Z pattern is how
older generations naturally read large blocks of text.Page 16 Reinventing Learning For the AOG Fast Pattern Reading However, 2007 research from Kent State University in the US demonstrated that digital readers didn’t read pages the way the older generations do. They didn't use a Z pattern. They discovered that digital readers’ eyes first unconsciously skimmed the bottom of a page and then they scan the edges of the page before they started scanning the page itself for information in what’s called an F or fast pattern or Golden Triangle pattern.. F-pattern reading has three components: Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. Then they move down the page a bit and read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. Finally, they scan the content's left side in a vertical movement in a general shape that roughly resembles a capital letter ‘F’. What follows is a series of thermographic prints developed at Kent State in 2007. Researchers used a heat map to track the eye movement of readers in both digital and non-digital reading configurations and then summarized the results.
Page 17 Reinventing Learning For the AOG When looking at and interpreting these heat maps, what you need to understand is that the brighter the color, the more the reader has focused on the information in that area of the page. And conversely , the darker the area, the less the reader has focused there. As you can clearly see , digital readers typically read in an F-Pattern - and unconsciously they ignored the right side and bottom half of the page. Statistically, digital readers only read about 28% of the words on a paper or digital page. The Reverse S-Pattern Reading However, what’s been recently discovered is that with the adoption of mobile devices over the past 10 years, scanning is now much more vertical - up and down the page in a reverse S- pattern rather than side to side like with the Z-and F-patterns. It appears that the use of mobile devices has habitually conditioned searchers to now scan more vertically because they’re looking for the fastest path to the desired content - so compared to 10 years ago they are viewing more content during a single reading session as they go down rather than across the page as a result of vertical rather than horizontal scanning, they’re spending less time viewing each line - and this is having a significant impact on reading comprehension. Add to the many distractors we find with digital text - hyperlinks, videos, audio clips, images, interactive graphics, share buttons, or a comments section—features that force the reader to stop and make decisions rather than simply reading from top to bottom. Perhaps the biggest
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difference between print and online reading is that the latter introduces decision making.
Print reading is very much there's a dead end—it's isolated lateral reading. Digital reading is
more like a 'choose your own adventure.' You can click on something else and continue on
again. In other words, reading goes from being a linear experience in print to being a
nonlinear one online.
“... Understanding the impact of F-pattern and vertical reading has enormous
implications for the design of engaging reading materials that will compel readers
to read the entire page for meaning rather than just a small portion of the page.”
The bottom line is that with the emergence of digital media, reading has completely
changed. Learners and adults alike just don’t read online the same way they do with paper.
That’s because there’s a fundamental difference between reading paper and pixels; between
reading and scrolling; between linear reading and hyperlinking. With the emergence of
digital media, reading had changed profoundly. We don’t read the same way online as we do
on paper. In fact, the physiology of the reading process itself changes. We read on screens in
short bursts, rather than with sustained focus. As we have moved from reading paper to
reading screens skimming has become the new reading. The more we read online, the more
likely we were to move quickly, without stopping to ponder any one thought.
So if you think you’re teaching the same reading skills to your learners using an iPad - you’re
not. When reading a paper page, readers tend to concentrate more on following the text.
When readers scroll on a screen, they tend to read more quickly (and less deeply). Reading
using digital media like laptops, tablets or smartphones speeds things up. On-screen readers
tend to browse and scan, look for keywords, and read in a much less linear, more selective
fashion without stopping to ponder any one word or thought. This affects readers ability to
read deeply. As we have moved from reading paper to reading screens, skimming has
become the form of new.
Young students also need instruction on how to self-regulate and manage distractions in the
online world—when to ignore links, close tabs, and stay on one text or app rather than
jumping around to others, for example. Learners can be taught to read as effectively on
screens as they can read paper - but it takes practice and time and the development of new
technical skills. Understanding the impact of F-pattern and vertical reading has enormous
implications for the design of engaging reading materials that will compel readers to read
the entire page for meaning rather than just a small portion of the page.Page 19 Reinventing Learning For the AOG
F-Pattern & Reverse S-Pattern Suggestions
• Important information should be placed across the top of the design where it will
generally be read.
• Lesser information should be placed along the left edge of the design often in bullet
points where little horizontal eye movement is required to take everything in.
• When applying the F-pattern think scanners rather than readers, and place content
these scanners would most likely be interested in along the F or reverse S.
• Place important information at the top and information designed to pull someone
further into the page down the side. Lesser information should be placed along the
left edge of the design often in bullet points where little horizontal eye movement is
required to take everything in.
Strategies That Work
• Read this article on F-Pattern reading.
• Talk with a partner about strategies you can use to ensure learners read the entire
page and not just a part of the page.
• Take the document titled F-Pattern Reading that is stored in the workshop folder and
apply what you now understand about F-Pattern reading to adapt it.
• Read an article on the basics of colour theory.
• Read an article on the principles of graphical design.
• Read an article about the basics of typography.
• Read an article about the basics of photo composition.
• Read an article on the basics of video production.Page 20 Reinventing Learning For the AOG
Attribute 3: Learning Must Be Fun
“... Digital learners prefer learning that is simultaneously relevant, active, instantly
useful, and fun. Many educators feel compelled to teach memorization of materials
in the curriculum guide.…”
This compulsion to focus on memorization is largely driven by the need to prepare learners
for the tests teachers and their students regularly have to face. We believe that this is
happening at the expense of helping our learners develop the new and very different
modern learning skills they will all need once they leave school. The digital generations are
frequently criticized, derided, misunderstood, misrepresented, and disrespected in the
media - and they’re often accused of being intellectual slackers and anti-social beings who
lack even basic social skills.
The research says that on the contrary, for the vast majority, the digital world is a far from an
isolating, anti-social experience. Outside of school, they’re constantly immersed in aPage 21 Reinventing Learning For the AOG
collaborative culture based on building relationships that allow them to interact not only
with their classmates but also with people who aren’t geographically close. The Internet has
become a teen hang out – the ultimate mall where teenagers can meet and chat.
“... Digital technologies engage learners in ways that are relevant to their lives,
allowing them to learn by doing as they experiment with new social and cultural
norms. The reason that school is boring for many learners today is that schools
have not caught up with what learners can do outside of school.”
In fact, it turns out; they’re a very social generation - here’s the difference - they’re just not
social the way older generations think of social. They live at least part of the time in digital
worlds that they’ve created for themselves. They play Minecraft, Mass Effect, Pokemon Go,
Halo, Angry Birds, and hundreds of other games that are exciting and engaging - and they
use digital apps and tools to constantly stay connected to everyone and everything - and in
these virtual environments they create and control everything - they’re users - they’re active -
there’s excitement, novelty, risk, the company of peers - it’s somewhere they can turn for
advice and information.
They observe, they inquire, they participate, discuss, argue, play, critique, and investigate.
Digital technologies engage learners in ways that are relevant to their lives, allowing them to
learn by doing as they experiment with new social and cultural norms. The reason that
school is boring for many learners today is that schools have not caught up with what
learners can do outside of school. Many young people are apathetic because there’s a huge
gap between what exists in the real world outside of school versus what they’re made to do
in school.Page 22 Reinventing Learning For the AOG Ian’s son Kolby is an internationally renowned 3D artist who specializes in character and creature creation for video games - he’s truly a rock star in his business. If you do a Google Image search for Kolby, it will show you just a few of the many characters he’s developed including the iconic Joker’s figurine from the Batman Returns movie he created for DC Comics. Kolby is incredibly in demand. For several years, he worked for EA Sports in Montreal and was one of the lead artists in the creation and development of Mass Effect II - one of the world’s most popular video games - but then he was recruited by Microsoft to move to Seattle and work as the Senior Character Artist on Microsoft’s hugely successful video game Halo. Because of his successful track record, he’s constantly being headhunted. A few years ago, Ian had dinner with Kolby, his wife and a well known, high profile president of a very successful video game company. The president told Ian that when they design new video games, they intentionally create them to require the players to make a decision every one-half to one-second - and ensure that the players are rewarded or punished for those decisions every 7 to 10 seconds. That’s immediate gratification and reward. But then he pulled out his laptop and showed us the data that compared how often digital learners are rewarded while playing their games compared to how often learners are asked to make decisions for themselves or are positively rewarded for their actions in the classroom. According to his numbers, on average learners got to ask a question, make a personal decision, or get positively reinforced for their actions in the classroom about once every 35 minutes. That might at least partially explain why there are so many learners in our
Page 23 Reinventing Learning For the AOG
classrooms who are waiting for the video game version of school to go on sale, so they don’t
have to attend our traditional schools anymore.
“...Studies show that games outperform textbooks in helping learners learn fact-
based subjects such as geography, history, physics, and anatomy, while also
improving visual coordination, cognitive speed, and manual dexterity. That’s the
reason why so many learners become easily frustrated and disengaged because
many of them have a digital life outside of school and a non-digital life in school.”
In fact, there are some experts from the older generations who argue that the experiences
the digital generations are having - and the skills they’re developing - are worthless, time
wasting and irrelevant - that play and games are simply preparation for work and life after
school. The suggestion often made that games are a waste of time only holds up if you
consider serious deep learning to be a waste of time.
Studies show that games outperform textbooks in helping learners learn fact-based subjects
such as geography, history, physics, and anatomy, while also improving visual coordination,
cognitive speed, and manual dexterity.
That’s the reason why so many learners become easily frustrated and disengaged because
many of them have a digital life outside of school and a non-digital life in school. Increasingly
this generation expects - in fact, they demand - to be able to be in control of their world at
least part of the time.
The problem is that what they expect and consistently experience in their world outside of
school with their devices and games and apps, and texting and selfies and websites are often
completely at odds with what they experience in the classroom.
So after our learners have spent hundreds of hours of their lives playing games and
exploring virtual environments outside of school, they come to school where almost
everything is controlled by adults and they’re forced to sit in classrooms where things are
hierarchical and unidirectional - where the teacher stands at the front of the room talking at
them non-stop without even showing nice pictures.
And you know what they tell us? They say that it’s boring - that they control nothing, that
they have to sit there passively and listen - for them, school is all about constantly being
passive observers and learning endlessly deferred gratification.
We can guarantee you that it will not be possible much longer to engage young people in an
educational system where the quality of experiences schools provide isn’t as inviting and
engaging as the quality of the experiences they can get outside the school. Outside of
school, the modern world is a media rich, visual environment. Between the Internet, videoPage 24 Reinventing Learning For the AOG games, apps and 500 channels of cable, the competition for our children's attention has become intense. Have you ever noticed that you never have to remind learners to play their video games - it’s always a struggle to get them to stop playing because they always want “just another 15 minutes”. Just imagine an education system that was as immersive and entertaining as a video game. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear your learners begging to spend just another 15 minutes with math, history or science? If boredom is the number one cause of disengagement and truancy, then our education system needs to be beyond wildly entertaining. In fact, if we want to prepare our children for the future, then learning needs to become a lot less like school and as addictive as video games. The traditional classroom is just not enough for them - our challenge is to keep up. The digital generations will never accept the traditional stand and deliver educational model - they need to be in a situation where they’re controlling things - and that can never happen in the current school environment. So we just have to ask. Why is it that our young learners can solve the most complex problems in a video game involving executive decision making and analytical thinking or quickly learn to use a sophisticated tool or app - yet we continue to accept the fact that they can’t add or read? In fact, there are some experts from the older generations who argue that the experiences the digital generations are having - and the skills they’re developing - are worthless, time wasting and irrelevant - that play and games are simply preparation for work and life after school. Right beneath our radar, Digital Learners are very much an intellectual, problem-solving, thoughtful, and very social generation. They have highly developed critical thinking, problem-solving, and social skills. The problem is that their social skills and their problem-solving skills are just not the skills that we, the older generations, value - nor are these the skills that we typically test for in schools today - so as a result, their extraordinary cognitive and technical abilities are often simply not acknowledged or dismissed outright by the older generations. Digital learners prefer learning that is simultaneously relevant, active, instantly useful, and fun. It’s taken us years of study and research to understand, but what we now realize is that for today's digital generations, play is work, and work is increasingly seen regarding games and game play.
Page 25 Reinventing Learning For the AOG That’s why the digital generations want their learning to be relevant and instantly useful. But beyond this, more than anything else, when it comes to learning, the digital generations want to know the answer to one simple question: why in the world am I learning what you’re trying to teach me? And what possible connection does this have to me and my world? And for the digital generations, the correct answer is not because it might be on the test or might be needed to pass the course - that’s just not enough of a reason for them. The younger generations’ brains have been completely saturated with information and digital technology - that’s why their brains are physically different from ours. They are the “Always-on Generation.” They learn when they want, and expect learning resources to be available when and where they need them in the same way they consume media through streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify; they binge watch TV series multiple episodes in a row, and they expect a wide range of music to be available when and where they want. If they listen to a song in the car, they expect to be able to pick it back up in the house or while walking down the street. Increasingly, they expect learning resources to be available in the same fashion - and as a result, they think differently - and they process information differently, using different parts of the brain differently than people of our generations do. And it doesn’t stop there - learners two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences. We’re beginning to see accelerated gaps between the younger generations - between the brains of screenagers and tweenagers and younger children - it’s an everyday part of their lives. The digital generations learned to type before they learned to write - they use a keyboard more than they use a pen. Anyone who has seen a two-year-old playing around with an iPad
Page 26 Reinventing Learning For the AOG
knows exactly what we're talking about. Technology is not new if you were born into it. And
remember, the iPad is the most primitive technology the younger generations will ever use.
We need digital experiences in every classroom - and we need digital tools in every
student and teacher’s hand - because they are the pen and paper of our time - they are
the lens through which we experience much of our world.
Think we’re overstating things? Today 70% of children between the ages of 2 and 5 can
operate a computer mouse or trackpad, but only 11% of them can tie their shoes.
When today’s elementary students are 40, they’ll remember iPads the way (many of us)
remember cassette tapes. It will be funny that we used to hold large, heavy glass rectangles
in their hands and had to open up apps separately. And had to know which app did what.
And had to ‘Google’ information. And sometimes weren’t even connected to the internet
because WiFi signals were unreliable. And didn’t have the information that we might need
pushed to us before we even knew we needed it. And we had to type! We had to actually
touch a screen or keyboard made of little plastic squares to make words—crazy times!
Strategies That Work
• Read this article and then discuss with a partner the potential of genius hour or 20%
time. How could you implement this in your classroom?
• Read this article and discuss with a partner how teaching with scenarios helps create
relevance for learners.)
• Get up and walk around for a minute to get your blood pumping.
• Act out a scene with a partner from a movie.
• Visit GoNoodle and explore the ways to add brain breaks to your instructional
program.
• With a partner, make a list of ten educational activities you can engage in with learners
outside.Page 27 Reinventing Learning For the AOG Turning the Corner & Heading For Home Now there’s much more we’d like to say - but we hope this brief presentation explains, at least in part, why learners act differently, why they behave the way they do, why they respond to the world the way they do, on the way they learn, how they view the world, and what interests and engages them. We hope this might help explain at least in part some of the fundamental differences between their generations & ours. And yet sadly, and this is what frustrates us more than anything else - despite the fact that we now have several decades of research on what works in the classroom, almost nothing of what we’ve learned about how our children’s brains and minds function is being applied in the classroom today. The new digital landscape has changed everything - and we apologize if we sound disrespectful because it’s not intended that way - but very few people reading this handout get what we’re saying since there are very few people here in the room under the age of 30.
Page 28 Reinventing Learning For the AOG
So we just have to ask this question. If learners are way ahead of teachers in developing the
skills needed to succeed in the digital world of the future - and if many teachers are oblivious
to the significance of the skills learners have acquired in this digital world - and if teachers
continue to do things in the classroom that we already know don’t work, because many do -
then who here really has the learning problem? Is it the learners, or is it us?
We think there’s great irony in the fact that many experienced teachers are struggling trying
to become learners in the new digital landscape. It’s a great challenge unlearning being a
traditional teacher.
“What’s the definition of insanity? It’s doing things the same way we’ve always
done - but expecting, or wanting or needing completely different results. The
problem is that if we continue to do what we’ve always done, we will continue to get
what we’ve always got. And in doing so, we will fail our children and fail this
nation.”
What’s the definition of insanity? It’s doing things the same way we’ve always done - but
expecting, or wanting or needing completely different results. The problem is that if we
continue to do what we’ve always done, we will continue to get what we’ve always got. And
in doing so, we will fail our children and fail this nation.Page 29 Reinventing Learning For the AOG Learners Are Different! And we know, we know - we hear teachers and parents complain all the time about how different learners are and how differently they learn and how different what motivates them is. But then in the same breath, we continue to teach and test them the way we always have. We hear all the time that learners today can’t concentrate the same way the older generations can - and that there are learners today who can’t even memorize the names of the countries and their capitals. But these same learners are thinking to themselves, “Why in the world do we have to remember this when we can just Google or Siri the answer in 3 seconds on my cell phone?” Meanwhile, many teachers are saying, “What’s a Siri?” But these same learners who seem completely incapable of remembering the names of the countries and the capitals can instantly and with enthusiasm tell you the lyrics of 1,000 songs or the attributes of 100 game characters. It’s not that most learners have ADD or ADHD, which almost overnight have become the official brain syndrome of the digital age and the standard excuse why learners are disengaged from schools and learning. While there
Page 30 Reinventing Learning For the AOG certainly are legitimate cases of ADD and ADHD, there are some who suggest that many of these cases just reflect the drug companies selling products that attempt to medicate and control the effects of digital bombardment on the digital cultural brain. Our learners are living in the most intensely stimulating period in the history of the earth. They’re being bombarded with information and having their attention drawn by every platform - from computers & smart phones & tablets & advertising & hundreds of television channels & the internet- and then they’re getting penalized for getting distracted. Distracted from what? From boring stuff at school for the most part. It seems to us that it’s no coincidence that the instance of ADD and ADHD has risen and in parallel with the rise of standardized testing. These learners are being given Ritalin and Adderall and all manner of things, often quite dangerous drugs to get them focused and calm them down. We believe it’s an invented epidemic. From our research, and writing and conversations with the digital generations, we can assure you that the vast majority of them are not disabled - they’re just different! They’re just not interested - and they just have no patience for old ways of teaching and learning than we do. So increasingly they’re shutting us out. Is this really a surprise? Blaming them for acting the way they do is like blaming a bank for being robbed. It’s simple. If you make learners do hour
Page 31 Reinventing Learning For the AOG after hour of low-grade clerical work, don’t be surprised if they start to fidget. As Ken Robinson points out, they are not, for the most part, suffering from psychological problems - they’re suffering from childhood! The digital generations are experiencing a world that is increasingly - some would say COMPLETELY out of synch with our traditional instructional approaches. Many children do not learn the way teachers want to teach. The problem is that many educators and decision makers just don’t get it or aren’t willing to acknowledge that there’s a widening gap between the world and schools. Schools are changing - the problem is that the world is changing many times faster. The challenge is that learners are digital and many educational institutions are analog. In this changing world, the role of a teacher is not just to stand up in front of a class and show the learners how smart the teacher is. It’s to prepare learners to learn without us - to help them understand how smart they all can become. To be an effective 21st-century teacher, we must first possess the very same 21st-century skills that our learners are expected to have. And, in addition to those skills, we must be able to help all of our learners obtain and develop 21st-century skills. As individuals who have spent many years in the classroom, we believe that anybody who knows anything about anything knows that the secret to success in the classroom has very little to do with being a good disciplinarian or classroom manager - and everything to do with creating an engaging methodology that compels learners to want to be there. It’s not about making learners learn - it’s about getting to want to learn - without motivation there will be no learning. Ask yourself this question - would learners be in your classroom if they didn’t have to be there? The killer app and best 1-to-1 device for the 21st Century learning is a good teacher - a teacher with a love of learning, an appreciation of the aesthetic, the esoteric, the ethical, the moral. A teacher who understands Bloom, Gardner, and Piaget - who knows how different learners learn at different times and different rates. Today’s learners are not the same learners that schools were originally designed for - and today’s learners are certainly not the learners that many of today’s educators were trained to teach. Beyond this, it’s crazy to think that 18 plus years into the 21st Century, we’re still debating what 21st Century learning looks like.
Page 32 Reinventing Learning For the AOG Square Peg, Round Hole Education continues to operate on assumptions about teaching, learning, and assessment that are targeted at learners from another age that has already passed us by. As a result, when we travel nationally and internationally, we are increasingly concerned that we are trying to fit square peg learners into round hole schools; and round peg learners into square peg schools. And increasingly we’re depending on standardized tests to measure increasingly non-standardized brains. Now let’s be clear - this is not about throwing out traditional approaches. There absolutely is a place for traditional teaching and learning and assessment. There absolutely is a place for basic skills and memorization. There absolutely is a place for the tried and true - for traditional education. That’s how you transmit culture - that’s how you transmit democracy from one generation to the next. Educators have every right to expect our learners to respect and honour our traditions - make sure you heard us say that. But at the same time, we have to understand that the world has fundamentally changed in the past 20 years - and it continues to change at a faster and faster rate. So, in the same way, that we have every right to expect the digital generations to respect, understand and engage with our world and our values, we also need to take the time and effort to respect, understand, and engage with their world and their values. Just because we were here first doesn’t mean we can ignore their world. It doesn’t mean that our ways are better. And we ignore their world at our peril. What we desperately need is a balance between our world and theirs - between traditional and digital learning environments.
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