JSB's Digital Divide and the Blogosphere with Mezirow
From the HSB newsletter JSB makes the following observations about digital generation gap:
There is a new kind of digital divide now and it is the divide between
faculty and students. Faculty, stuck in yesterday's analog world, are confronted
with students who arrive nicely fluent in digital technology and the virtues of
hyperspeed. Students already have a handle on how to convey their emotional
states electronically. It's up to adults to learn that vernacular, he said.
Educators who create programs for adult learning and distance learning need to
apply the vernacular and deepen and strengthen these new means of communication.When I saw this article, it made me think of Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnshon and the reluctance of my colleagues at my middle school to start blogging with me. I am disappointed they have not caught blogitis. It also made me think of Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives by Marc Prensky.
My professor and two of his blogmates have been discussing their classes and why students are not blogging more with engaging reflections. I can only offer Jack Mezirow's Transformation Theory of Adult Learning as a possible explanation. Mezirow noted that for real learning to take place then one's perspective has to have changed. According to Mezirow, there are three kinds of critical reflections: content reflection, process reflection, and premise reflection. It is very obvious to me that the professors engage in premise reflections because they take a real hard look at biases, beliefs, and values while the students (myself included) are still at content reflection and process reflection in their adult development.
P.S. I know that Marc Prensky stated several times that kids' brains are different now. I can accept that their brains are wired different due to experiences. So if brains are wired differently, could maturity development be different too because of expanded lifespans? Should middle age timespans be changed from 30s/40s to 50s/60s?
posted by QueenAnne at 4:55 PM
1 Comments:
I think that on of JSB's biggest contributions to the field has been to constantly remind us that the answer to technology questions is almost always "both-and" not either-or. To be successful, students need to master their own vernacular and become more fluent in the traditional literacies.
This requires transformation at all three levels you mention. Teachers need to be aware of and understand the content of the read/write web that has expanded their students' options. They need to participate in the process of learning in this new way so they understand it at a deep level. The hardest transformation is to change their perspective to accept that, as teachers, we have much to learn from our students. We also have to find ways to communicate to students that we value the capabilities of their vernacular even as we are encouraging them to understand those learning and communications tools that we dinosaurs are more comfortable.
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