Could Digital Textbooks Be a Mistake?

I just finished The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr and I feel compelled to get some thoughts organized while its ideas are still fresh on my mind. While The Shallows is an interesting book on its own, it is especially thought-provoking when considered along with Born Digital. The premise of the latter book is that kids today, who are digital natives because they were born into an entirely digital world, possess brains that are physically hard-wired differently from kids' brains of generations past because of the way they interact with all things digital. The Shallows, coincidentally, cites loads of research supporting the same premise. Carr, though, specifically addresses how the Internet, with all its distractions, reduces our attention span, adversely affects our ability to read and concentrate for extended periods of time, makes us seek the easy way every time, generally undoes all of the effects of reading from a good old fashioned book, and physically alters the architecture and functioning of our brains.

If you have ever read what I've written here or if you know anything about me, you know I am anything but a Luddite. Having said that, though, I find myself reconsidering the effectiveness of digital textbooks. I'm a smart enough guy to be discerning about the contents of the books I read and I don't jump on the bandwagon for every book on my reading list. I think critically and analytically and I devote significant amounts of mental energy weighing the content of everything I read. This most recent read is no exception.

I haven't completely formulated my theory yet, but here is my initial thought: Digital textbooks, hyped because of the interactive content (hyperlinks, embedded video and audio clips, etc.), may actually prevent students from concentrating for extended periods of time and, therefore, may be less effective than traditional textbooks for students trying to grasp difficult concepts or commit to memory large amounts of information.

I'm not suddenly opposed to all digital textbooks. I can see great advantages to having digital textbooks in some subjects and at some levels as well as disadvantages for digital textbooks in other subjects and at other levels. I'm going to address this again later this week after I've had a chance to get organized and do a little more reading. Check back for updates. In the meantime, track down both Born Digital and The Shallows and add them to your reading list (I should point out that both books are full of far more research topics and fascinating ideas than the few I've presented here). The books may not affect you the way they affected me but the research in both should intrigue you.

The Most Frightening Part of Increased Plugged-In Time

So, why should we as educators be frightened that our kids are now spending more and more hours online or plugged-in to social media? Obviously the more our kids stay plugged in then the less they're reading, sleeping, working on schoolwork or spending time with family. However, there is a much more frightening aspect of digital natives increasing their already astonishing number of hours plugged in to social media. I'll explain.

I met last week with two Department of Justice agents who specialize in cybercrimes. We spent about almost two hours discussing potential online threats and dangers our kids face every day. I sat stunned as they gave me statistic after statistic about how many children and teens have had conversations online with complete strangers, how many of those strangers have lied about how old they actually are, how many of those strangers have told the truth about how old they are but the kids don't care, and (the most frightening of all) how many children and teens have received the invitation LMIRL (let's meet in real life). As an educator whose entire career has been in the digital age, I have seen and dealt with all sorts of things. I am neither naive nor easily shocked. However, after our conversation I felt overwhelmed.

The good news for educators and parents is that there are measures we can take to protect our kids. The greatest weapon against the evils that lurk in the chat rooms and social networking sites is education. We will be doing an educational series soon not only about the threats I've mentioned here but also about other digital dangers including sexting, cyberstalking and more. We're going to host the Department of Justice agents for an assembly one morning in school to educate the students and then for an assembly of a much more graphic nature at night to show the stark reality to our parents. This assembly will be sandwiched between Advisory sessions about sexting, compulsive texting, cyberbullying, cyberstalking and more. There are a number of great resources available but the newest one I've come across is A Thin Line. We'll probably use much of their information in our Advisory sessions while the DOJ will use its own material.

I encourage you to contact the FBI or Department of Justice, speak to someone who works with cybercrimes, and invite them to your office to get you caught up on how predators are hunting our kids. You will be shocked. I guarantee it.

Digital Natives Increase Plugged-In Time

A recent New York Times article reveals startling new information about our digital native kids. Just when we thought our digital natives couldn't log any additional on-line or plugged-in time, they do just that. According to the article, If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online, by Tamar Lewin, the Kaiser Family Foundation repeated a study last done five years ago and discovered that digital natives are now online or plugged-in "seven and a half hours a day... compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago." While that is startling enough, because digital natives multi-task so well, these kids pack about eleven hours of media use into these seven and a half hours each day. Of the seven and a half hours, digital natives average about two hours of that time on a mobile device. The study shows that more than 70% of teens have a TV in their rooms and more than 33% of teens have a computer with internet access in their rooms. The new study further supports the idea that our schools and our classrooms must continue to make strides in an effort to keep kids literally plugged in to education. More integration of technology into daily classroom activities, allowing students more access to technology for academic endeavors, and more out-of-the-box thinking and planning by teachers are just a few of the things that must happen in schools to keep our kids focused on their education.

All of these statistics are fascinating but on some level they should be downright frightening. Why? I'll explain in my next post and the explanation has nothing to do with classroom education.

New Study Says Online Instruction Better than Traditional Instruction?

I remember having a conversation with a crusty, old, and ready-to-move-out-to-pasture teacher during my first year of teaching. We were standing outside a small closet containing a few 386 computers (we called it a computer lab then) when he said, "One day we won't have jobs 'cause them new computers will be teaching classes for us and probably doing better at it." I'm wondering now if that luddite might have been an oracle.

SRI International just published a report for the Department of Education entitled Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. In other words, SRI International conducted a meta-analysis of empirical (evidence-based) studies of online learning then published its findings. The study's findings can be boiled down to one simple sentence, taken from the study's abstract, "...on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction." (In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. - from wikipedia)

In other words, based on online learning studies between 1996 and 2008, evidence indicates that students learning online outperformed students learning in traditional face-to-face settings. While the study goes on to say, "caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education)," I have to believe that today's digital learners, especially the motivated ones in grades 9-12, can experience similar results in certain content areas.

This study has prompted me to contact a few educators in the field of educational technology, some of whom are associated with the Louisiana Virtual School, to get their take on the study, its findings and its implications for online learning in K-12 and 9-12 settings. When I've collected their feedback, I'll post a follow-up to this post.

___________________________________________________________________

Full Abstract from Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies:

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes—measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation—was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).

Bored with Powerpoint? Check out Prezi

I have to thank Shawn Liner, my science department chair, for introducing me to Prezi. Powerpoint has been a pretty effective presentation tool for many years now. While you can embed all sorts of cool stuff in ppt presentations, Shawn was pretty bored with ppt and set out to find the its replacement. He may have done just that when he came across a great new presentation software called Prezi. Shawn posted recently about Prezi on his blog.

So, what is so cool about Prezi? First, no more slides. In fact, Prezi is completely nonlinear so it can be as wild as you want it to be. I really can't explain it as well as as Peter Arvai, CEO of Prezi, so I'll let him explain it.



Still not sure what it looks like? Check out these two presentations Shawn did for his classes: electricity lecture and circuits lecture.

One of the greatest things about the new presentation format by Prezi, in my opinion, is the appeal it has for today's digital native learners who aren't wired to think in a linear fashion. Prezi allows you complete freedom and control when it comes to how you lay out the presentation and how you navigate through it. What a great teaching tool. Another thing I love about Prezi is that it works perfectly with our Activboards. Activboards plus Prezi certainly is a winning combination for getting kids' attention!

Will it take some getting used to? Will it take some teachers a while to get the hang of it? Sure. If it reaches our digital native kids, though, isn't it worth the effort?

Keeping Your Handbook and Policies Current and Relevant

This is the time of year when we, the leaders on our campuses, start looking ahead to the next school year. As educational leaders we're thinking about budgets, contracts, hiring, enrollment and more. We also should be looking ahead to next year with regard to the school handbook and the policies contained within. Ideally, over the course of any given school year, the school leadership constantly makes notes in the handbook as issues arise which are not directly addressed in the handbook. Such issues arise more frequently than ever before as the technology used by our students changes monthly and weekly.

Here are a few things you might want to consider when reviewing your handbook for possible changes, additions or clarification for the 2009-10 school year:

• sexting and emailing pornographic images - What happens when your students are involved? when your students send or receive or view? when your student is in the photo(s)?
• cyberbullying - What will your response be to students who are cyberbullied? to those who are cyberbullying? How will you differentiate between cyberbullying and "just joking?"
• cheating with cell phones and other devices - Do you know how kids use cell phones and other devices to cheat on exams and projects? Will cheating with an electronic device be treated the same as a pen and paper cheat sheet?
• searching cell phones and other devices - Do you know when it is appropriate to search a student's cell phone or device? Is it clearly explained in writing?
• cell phones vs. iTouch and other 3G devices that are not phones - If cell phones are banned, what do you do with internet-ready devices that aren't phones?
• Facebook, MySpace, social networking sites, chats and blogs - What do you do with students speaking out against the school? against faculty and administration? What do you with images of your students on social networking sites in which your students are drinking, doing drugs or are engaged in other prohibited behaviors? Does it make a difference if the students are somehow connected to your school in the images (uniforms, t-shirts, etc.)? What if images of faculty or staff appear on social networking sites portraying them in the same situations described above?
• YouTube - What happens when your students shoot video in your school or classrooms and post to sites such as YouTube? Does it make a difference if the video is objectionable or not? What if your student appears in an objectionable video online?
• recording digital images at school - If digital cameras (still and/or video) are prohibited at school, what about cell phones and other devices with cameras? How will you handle a parent whose child records a teacher's poor performance without anyone's knowledge then posts the video or turns it over to the school? Who's in more trouble - student or teacher?

You may think your handbook covers everything teens are up to these days. If it does, send me a copy so I can study it and learn from it. As you look ahead to next year and consider your handbook or policies, I urge you to think outside the box and to try to anticipate issues likely to arise next year that are not addressed in writing currently. Technology, the law, schools and limitations of things like privacy and expression are still basically uncharted waters. Educational leaders in the 21st century have no excuse for being caught off-guard by the things our students are doing with today's (and tomorrow's) technology. If your handbook still uses language like CD player or Walkman, you probably need to update.

Rocking Biology with Guitar Hero

One of my young, energetic and extremely creative teachers recently did an exciting and original lesson in her biology class. The lesson hooked the digital native students right away and kept them interested. Why? Several reasons:

• the lesson was creative and unlike anything the students has seen before


• the lesson was hands-on and interactive


• the lesson used technology to support an already-solid lesson


• the lesson tied new knowledge to something the students already knew

I interviewed my teacher and asked her to share a little about the lesson for the benefit of others interested in jazzing up (or rocking out) their classrooms.

Why and how did you use Guitar Hero for a lesson in your classroom? What objective(s) were you trying to teach with the lesson?

I used guitar hero in the class to introduce students to translation, the process of creating proteins within a cell. To be admitted to play, students had to submit a "ticket" consisting of an analogy between video game playing and translation. As we played guitar hero, we discussed how each element related to translation and the students corrected their analogies.

My objectives were to try to help the students to understand the jobs of rRNA, tRNA, and mRNA in creating proteins in ways that stick to their minds and to motivate students to think outside the box when studying.

Where did you get the idea for the lesson?

This particular lesson is a modified version of two lessons my mentor teacher showed me during student teaching. In his first lesson, he had the students create an analogy for translation. As a class, the students chose to make the analogy to guitar hero. The second lesson was one in which he was having the students design their own experiments. The students were to play a video game with different variables introduced to see the effect. Some played with their opposite hand, others wearing oven mitts.

I felt that combining the two activities would work better for teaching translation because the students would have to think about what was happening in the video game in terms of translation, and also they would have the visual aid in front of them.

Would you call the lesson a success? Why or why not?

The guitar hero lesson resulted exactly as planned with the students gaining a better understanding of translation before we got into the minute details of it. For their last quiz, students were helping other students with vocabulary words and concepts, and continually referred to the guitar hero analogy in their explanations to each other.

What was the reaction of the students to the lesson?

The students were in disbelief when I first brought up the idea. As time passed and the day for guitar hero grew closer, the students became excited. A couple of days before we had our demonstration I assigned the students to create their "tickets" for entry to the guitar hero day. Part of the assignment was to play a video game for 10 minutes and create an analogy of translation based on the game they played. I posted the assignment on RenWeb because most students felt their parents would not believe such an assignment.

The day we played in class, the students were excited, cooperative, and helpful to each other. Some students had never played before and those that had gave instructions and encouragement. After the lesson many commented on their better understanding of the concept and said they hoped for more activities like that one.

Photo by Nancy Reynolds

Who Teaches Digital Natives to...

Keeping Up with Digital Natives - Part VI
Who Teaches Digital Natives to...

This is the sixth installment of my series on digital natives and how we can meet their needs in the classroom.

We spend so much time in schools today trying teach kids, to impart knowledge. Today's digital natives can teach themselves in many situations. Their creativity and the way their brains are wired allows them to problem-solve better than their digital immigrant teachers in many situations.



Consider these points:

• Who teaches a digital native to use MySpace? Facebook? Twitter? PhotoBucket?


• Who teaches a digital native to use his iPhone straight out of the box?


• Does a digital native ever read the instruction manual before he picks up the controller for XBOX 360, PS3, or Wii?


• Who teaches a digital native to IM or text?


• Who teaches a digital native to capture video with a phone and upload it to YouTube?

Digital natives, when interested in something, will spend whatever amount of time necessary to find solutions to problems and to map pathways to a desired end, to a finished product, to mastery of a skill. Digital natives will do the same in the classroom if the teacher can find a way to give them a problem to solve, a pathway to create, a process to learn. Give them tools and they'll figure it out, either on their own or collaboratively.

Student Email Accounts: Why Don't More Schools Provide Them for Students?

Providing high school students with email addresses certainly is nothing new. What college or university doesn't use school email accounts with its students? When I taught in Texas between 1996 and 2006, our students had email addresses. I don't know that having email addresses for students more than ten years ago was incredibly progressive. I do know it was invaluable, though. After spending a year without student email addresses last year, I moved to another school with no student email addresses. I am pleased, though, that I have rectified this situation for our 500+ students.

Beginning in the next few weeks, all our high school students will be given an email account through Gaggle.net. Gaggle provides safe, secure email accounts for students. Some of Gaggle's best features include anti-porn filters, filters that alert administration when inappropriate text appears in emails, a line embedded at the bottom of every email sent that says, "This email was sent by a student at Insert Name of School Here," server storage space for students, and more.

The obvious question for those who have never used student email addresses in conjunction with school is, "Of what use are student emails in the process of educating kids?" To help shed some light on this, here are just a few ways we will use Gaggle to enhance our students' educational experience:

• the teachers and administration can teach students to use email responsibly


• students can register for Turnitin.com (another great service we use) using a school email address rather than a personal email address
  
• students can register with and log in on blogs (like those found on Blogger) using safe, school email addresses rather than personal email addresses to help protect their identities


• students can use school email addresses rather than a personal email addresses when they begin creating and building digital portfolios
  
• teachers can quickly and easily add entire classes to Outlook address books and send communications to their classes (I'll be out of class on Friday but I would like you to... or Please don't forget the Unit Test covering... or I found a great website you should check out before class tomorrow... or Please remember that parent consent forms for the field trip are due...); possibilities here are endless
  
• teachers can communicate easily with individual students (I'm sorry you were sick today. Please get class notes from a classmate and please read pages 88-102 before class tomorrow); teachers can be encouraged, not discouraged, to communicate with students because Gaggle can be monitored and because inappropriate dialogue will raise red flags


• students can communicate easily with teachers in a safe, secure way (I'm sick and won't be in class tomorrow. Will you please email me tomorrow night's homework? or I'm having difficulty with the proof on page 99. Can you help?)
  
• students can communicate with adults outside of school (college admissions correspondence, volunteer opportunities, interviewees, etc.)

As I speak to parents and students about what we can do better this year than we have in the past, the overwhelming majority of answers include something about better communication. By providing students with email accounts and then communicating with our students via email, we will be able to make major strides toward increased customer satisfaction. Additionally, we will give our teachers an additional tool with which they can reach their digital native students, thereby making it easier for our teachers to be more effective.

Interactivity: The Key to Reaching Digital Natives

Keeping Up with Digital Natives - Part V
Interactivity: The Key to Reaching Digital Natives 

This is the fifth installment of my series on digital natives and how we can meet their needs in the classroom.

After much careful consideration and thoughtful observation, I have come to this conclusion: for a digital native there is a direct correlation between the interactivity of his/her classroom experience and the impact of the classroom experience on the digital native.  Furthermore, the correlation between the two becomes stronger when the interactivity involves technology.  Consider these points:

• One of the first lessons new teachers learn is to call on students and ask them questions directly in order to keep them engaged: interactivity.
• My daughter has always loved Dora the Explorer because the TV asks her for input and direction.  She perceives that her input affects what happens on the screen:interactivity.
• My son has always loved video games because he has influence over the characters, the players, the civilizations, etc.  His actions and reactions in a dynamic scenario influence the direction the game goes: interactivity.
• Senior level students in our dual credit math class do their homework and tests on laptops.  They spend more time on these assignments than they ever have before but they don't even notice.  As they answer questions, the computer gives instant feedback.  Even silly phrases such as "Fantastic" and "Stupendous" make the students excited: interactivity.
• Senior English students in our English classes scour their lit books for quotes that describe them.  Using a variety of digital media, the students create presentations.  The students use Activboards to give the presentations in class.  The class, using a rubric provided by the teacher, use Activotes to grade the presentations on a number of things (correct MLA citations, accuracy of quotes relative to the presenter's personality, etc.) that require critical thinking and analysis.  Presenter and audience are fully engaged start to finish: interactivity.
• Students in history classes at my last school begged for review days in history classes because their history teacher used a powerpoint version of Jeopardy for exam reviews: interactivity.

Interactivity directly addresses a number of our digital natives' needs.  First, interactivity allows digital natives to collaborate and to be social.  The insane popularity of social networks, blogs, wikis and MMOG (massive multiplayer online games) is evidence that digital natives crave contact (interaction) with others even if that contact is digital.  Digital natives thrive when placed in groups and when given assignments, projects and challenges requiring collaboration.  It's a good thing, too, because the future for which we are trying to prepare digital natives will require more collaboration, especially digital collaboration (email, videoconferencing, etc.), than ever before.

Second, interactivity provides allows digital natives to receive feedback quickly and continuously.  Digital natives will not tolerate dial-up Internet because they want instant connectivity.  Digital natives do not write letters because they want to send and receive communications instantly.  Digital natives do not shop for CDs at the mall because they want mp3 downloads in seconds.  Do not misunderstand this to mean that digital natives have short attention spans.  That simply isn't true.  Digital natives will spend hours browsing online, playing video games, writing software, blogging, creating videos, using IM or sending texts, and even doing homework on laptops with interactive software.  Rather, the digital natives' desire for quick feedback is more likely a reflection of the world in which they live, the world of instant downloads and rapid-fire video games.

Third, interactivity provides opportunities for digital natives to be creative.  Digital natives not only are creative (perhaps by nature) but also crave outlets for their creativity.  If you have doubts, check out some of the machinima videos on youtube, photos on Photobucket, money-making schemes on ebay, websites, organizations and more, all created by digital natives.  Games such as the Sims series, World of Warcraft, even 1st-person shooter games, require creativity to master.  Teachers who require students to be creative, whether with writing assignments or with digital presentations, will engage and challenge their students more than those who simply require the organization and memorization of data.

An ancient Chinese proverb says, "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day.  Teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime."  Do you think that ancient Chinese fisherman simply wrote instructions for the hungry guy? No.  Interactive teaching was the key.  Do you think simply giving a digital native an engineering text will effectively teach engineering concepts?  No.  How about hands-on interactive engineering labs combined with the interactivity of the Infinity Project, all overseen by a master teacher?  You better believe it.

Here is my twofold challenge to the next generation of educational leaders: First, find a way to make your classrooms, as well as your out-of-school assessments and projects, as interactive as possible.  Second, couple the interactivity with technology.  This recipe will produce better teachers, better students and, ultimately, graduates prepared to enter a rapidly-changing digital future.

Born Digital - Understanding the first generation of digital natives: A Review

Keeping Up with Digital Natives - Part IIII 
Born Digital - Understanding the first generation of digital natives: A Review

This is the fourth installment of my series on digital natives and how we can meet their needs in the classroom.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently read Born Digital by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. The book is a product of joint research between the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen.

Born Digital paints a very clear portrait of the digital native. Palfrey and Gasser give fascinatng insight into the often-puzzling psyche of the digital natives now occupying virtually all the desks and tables in our classrooms. As an educator who feels pretty in touch with the 500+ digital natives amongst whom I walk on a daily basis, much of the information in the book validated feelings I had about digital natives already. The chapters dealing with digital natives as pirates, as creators, as learners and as innovators are especially relevant for me and my role as an educational leader. These chapters should be required reading for educational leaders and for teachers alike. While the book does not present teaching strategies, bright and creative teachers and administrators can use the information in Born Digital to tailor new and engaging lessons, courses and the like to meet the rapidly-changing needs of our digital native students.

The entire work, though, should be on the reading list of parents, especially those who are not technologically savvy and who may not be in touch with their children's digital side. Born Digital explains not only why digital natives desire so much time on the computer, the Internet, the cell phones and the video game console, but also what needs these pieces of technology fill for the digital natives. Furthermore, the book gives invaluable insight into what digital natives are doing and where they're going online. If parents have questions about things like Facebook, MySpace, World of Warcraft and other online attractions, Born Digital is a great place to get some answers.
Furthermore, Born Digital should alarm (and justifiably so) parents who have no concept of how freely their digital native children exchange and reveal personal information and photos, how frequently they communicate with strangers and how often they engage in questionable, if not illegal, activity online without thinking about the long-term consequences of their actions. This book will be an eye-opener for the vast majority of parents who will take the time to read the manuscript.

I highly recommend Born Digital for educators and I say that Born Digital is a must for parents. I also recommend browsing the website for the Digital Native Project.

If you have read Born Digital, I welcome a discussion about any or all of the book.

How Digital Immigrants Weathered the Storm Called Gustav

Keeping Up with Digital Natives - Part III
How Digital Immigrants Weathered the Storm Called Gustav 

This is the third installment of my series on digital natives and how we can meet their needs in the classroom (although this impromptu post has less to do with the classroom and more to do with how educational leaders can learn a lesson from our digital native students).

When I began this series on digital natives, I had no plans for this post.  Gustav, however, changed that.  My school is in Baton Rouge and, unless you have been living in an information vacuum, you know that Hurricane Gustav pounded Baton Rouge on September 1.  Almost a week later, tens of thousands of households (in East Baton Rouge Parish alone) remain without electricity.  Gustav severely crippled Baton Rouge and much of South Louisiana. 

As Gustav roared through Baton Rouge, the power for virtually the entire city went down.  As if that weren't bad enough, voice communications via phones went down as many telephone lines went down with the power lines.  With no power and no phones, communications in Baton Rouge and the surrounding area almost ceased to exist.  To further complicate matters, cell phone service was spotty at best.  Those cell channels that remained in service were overloaded with both incoming and outgoing calls.  Baton Rouge also faced an email crisis because so many Baton Rouge residents use local email providers and the servers in town were without power.  Thus begins the case study about how Gustav forced a campus of digital immigrants to live as digital natives, at least for a little while.

As the division head for grades 9 through 12, my responsibility during a crisis such as Gustav is to gather and disseminate information as quickly and accurately as possible.  To do that, though, my headmaster and the other two division heads, along with several other key administrators, had to be on the same page regarding information sent to our stakeholders.  Additionally, nearly 50 faculty and staff, from my division alone, waited in the silent darkness for information regarding the restart of school. Without email or phone service (cell or land lines), we took a page from the digital native handbook: we used texts (SMS).

Text messages, or Short Message Service, worked when cell phone voice service and land line phone service often did not.  While cell phone calls travel over voice channels, texts travel in small data packets over control channels.  Because texts are so small, they usually do not overload the control channels and, therefore, texting often works when calls don't.

After the administration coordinated information and strategies via text messages, we transmitted information to our faculty and staff using texts.  Some of the texts we sent manually and some we sent via broadcasts created with software.  Once the faculty realized that texting worked even when calling did not, the texts began to fly through the airwaves over Baton Rouge like never before.  Faculty and staff not only received information from us but also relayed information and questions to us and to each other.  In the past week alone, I sent and received hundreds of texts (no exaggeration) all related to school business.  For the past week, I communicated with my entire division and essentially managed my faculty from my phone.  I should note, though, that communication of this kind would have been impossible had I not programmed my phone with the cell numbers of everyone in my division ahead of time.  Based on our success with SMS communication, I recommend that administrators be prepared to use SMS technology to communicate with faculty and other stakeholders in the event of a crisis such as Gustav.

Our digital native students would be proud of some members of our faculty who, quite honestly, may never have used texts despite owning cell phones for years.  Remember, while digital immigrants use cell phones primarily for talking, digital natives use cell phones primarily for texting.  If you don't believe me, ask a digital native.

BTW (that means "by the way" for all you digital immigrants out there), have you noticed that your texts are limited to 160 characters?  That number was decided on over twenty years ago and was based on 7-bit characters in the English language; 160 7-bit characters limits the messages to very small pieces of information.  If you were to text in Arabic, Russian, Chinese or several other languages whose characters are 16-bit characters, your texts would be limited to 70 characters.  I thought some of you would appreciate that bit of nearly-useless information.

Share and Share Alike: Digital Natives and Plagiarism

Keeping Up with Digital Natives - Part II
Share and Share Alike: Digital Natives and Plagiarism

This is the second installment of my series on digital natives and how we can meet their needs in the classroom.

In the fifteen years I've spent in education I have never ceased to be amazed at how often students resorted to plagiarism and sharing of work on homework, quizzes and tests. I have never understood the phenomenon until recently. As I've read and study about digital natives, a light bulb slowly has appeared and finally I had a Eureka! moment. What I'm about to discuss is not an excuse for the academic dishonesty phenomenon faced by educators at all levels but rather an explanation.

Digital natives have grown up ripping CDs and burning CDs on their computers. They've spent countless hours filesharing with the original Napster, Kazaa and Limewire. Today with other services they upload and download music as often as they please with not so much as a second thought. They share playlists and tracks more often than they share gum and pencils at school. Digital natives upload and watch videos on YouTube, including scenes cut from movies, TV shows and other copyrighted sources, on a daily basis. They upload photos to Flickr, PhotoBucket and other sites so their friends and the rest of the world can see, and have for free, their photos. They edit wikis more often than digital immigrants use wikis. They mod as much as they play video games. I'm willing to say that the overwhelming majority of digital natives never intend to rip-off or steal from music and media companies. Digital natives do all these things simply because they can be done in the digital world into which they've been born. While many of these things are appalling to digital immigrants, for digital natives these actions are value-neutral.

With all this in mind, why then are we surprised that our digital native students have no qualms about collaborating on homework in the halls before school, about texting their friends about a test's content or format or about using information from outside sources without proper citation? In the context of their digital world (and, yes, they do have an entire world that exists outside of school), plagiarism and unauthorized collaboration aren't exactly crimes against humanity.

The challenge facing the next generation of educational leadership is this: we must help our students understand the difference between filesharing and academic dishonesty, between creating playlists from borrowed files and from creating papers from borrowed material. We can't always be the morality police so we may not be able to stop illegal downloading and filesharing. What we can do, though, is help students understand that in the academic world there is a certain standard of academic integrity expected of all who contribute to the content universe, be that in the form of a dissertation at research university or a freshman research paper in World History class. What we can do is give educate our students regarding the proper use and citation of sources and hold them accountable when they fail to meet the standards. How? Let me offer what we have done on our campus.

Using information from plagiarism.org, from a plagiarism guide I developed at another school and from a plagiarism guide developed by our English Department, our English faculty spent several days at the beginning of school teaching our students not only about plagiarism but also about the correct way to write, to paraphrase, to cite, etc. To engage our students, our English faculty used presentations on our Promethean Activboards throughout the process. At the conclusion of our instructional time, the faculty assessed the students' knowledge of plagiarism with an exam on the Activboard using a classroom set of Activotes. After students successfully completed the assessments, students and parents signed contracts acknowledging their training in the correct way to write and cite as well as their agreement to meet our expectations. By the end of the second week of school, our more than 500 students had successfully completed training on the subject of plagiarism. We will repeat the process at the beginning of each new school year with every student in the high school. As students write and submit their papers throughout the year, we require them to submit their papers through Turnitin.com, an anti-plagiarism site we use as a teaching tool to help students write and cite correctly.

Have we changed the world? Maybe not, but I believe we have changed our campus.

Keeping Up with Digital Natives

In my next several posts I will focus entirely on digital natives and how we can meet their needs in the classroom.

Keeping Up with Digital Natives - Part I

If you haven’t noticed yet, our classrooms are filled with digital natives and it’s time to try to keep up with them. Marc Prensky coined the term digital native to describe a person born into an all-digital world. If you are reading this right now, chances are you belong to a category of people known as digital immigrants, or those who were not born into an all-digital world but have adapted to the digital world to some degree. If you think you are a digital native but have been falsely accused of being a digital immigrant, I challenge you to take this quiz and answer the questions truthfully. The more I watch digital natives in my home and in my school, the more I am compelled to believe the direction current research is headed. The research seems to indicate that the cognitive processes of digital natives somehow differ from those of even my generation and especially from those of past generations.

Perhaps the greatest effort to study digital natives is taking place with the Digital Natives project, a joint venture between the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen. In fact, among the other publications generated by the project, the project has just published a book, Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. My copy, by the way, should be en route to my office now and I will share my thoughts on the book as soon as I get into it.

If Prensky and the Digital Natives project team are right, and I tend to believe they are, educators face a daunting task. The challenge will be multi-faceted. We must first learn more about the way digital natives think and process information. Next we must convince the educational world that analog education won’t be effective with digital learners. Finally, we must seek new, creative strategies to use technology to engage our students.

Think about our kids for a moment. They share pictures and music digitally. They send short emails, messages on Facebook and MySpace, they IM and they text. They crave stimulation from audio and video sources. They create social networks consisting of dozens, hundreds and even thousands of contacts. They make acquaintances online. They shop online. They can do more with their phones than most adults can do with a computer, a digital camera and a video recorder. These are who our kids are and there’s no going back. Why should we expect our kids’ education to look like ours, much less like our parents’ or grandparents’?

In the next few posts I will

• discuss a number of practical ideas for reaching digital natives
• provide some anecdotal evidence that supports what Prensky and others are saying
• challenge you to never look at our kids the same again