[Air-l] laptops and Internet access in class

Tue May 22 09:52:54 PDT 2007

Matt:

I hear all of what you are saying about developing focus, but what
Prenksy and the Duke iPod Initiative indicates is that students using
iPods actually will focus on a given task through podcasts. You will be
running into a new problem very shortly if you are US based:
non-traditional students and veterans. I am speaking as a person who is
a vet and recently finished a doctoral course of study. These people
will be mature and several may be more mature than you, so you may have
to adjust by setting up rules of use in your class for technology. You
will have to teach them how and when it is appropriate to use
technologies. There is a real issue of learning modalities: your style
may not mesh well with some of your students learning styles. I
interviewed an expert in the field (whose name escapes me) who indicated
that there is a communications divide between students and professors as
well as a digital divide. Most professors are from one type of school
when teaching while most students are visual-kinesthetic combination
learners.What is your discipline? You indicated that you are responsible
for where these students will work, I have found that as an internship
facilitator that the best way to teach these lessons is to put students
in the field so that they learn the etiquette that is involved in a
profession. You sound committed to excellence so I know you will find a
way to mesh the methods with the technology.

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Bernius
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 10:01 AM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] laptops and Internet access in class

On 5/21/07, Matthew Bernius <mbernius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Next year I will be banning cell phone, ipods, etc. in my 
> > undergraduate
> classes. [snipped]
> > And, at least for a school like RIT, that prides itself on preparing
> it's students for the workplace,
>
> basic technology etiquette needs to be stressed. The sad fact is that 
> a lot of the technology

> behavior I've seen isn't appropriate for the workplace.
>
> I'm wondering whether Matt might expand on ideas introduced in this 
> posting. In particular, suggestions that techology usage in classrooms

> doesn't translate into workplace settings. Choosing not to use the 
> technology, as the instructor, is a contradictory practice as 
> workplace educators are highly dependent on a variety of information 
> and communication technologies in promotion of learning among 
> employees in a variety of work settings.
>
> All of the class I teach have a lecture and a lab component. As for
myself, while I didn't grow up with the internet, I have been a computer
user since age 5. After school I spent eight years working in the new
media industry.

My experience is that entering freshmen don't have the maturity or the
skills to effectively use the technology to support learning. And I
don't believe that those skills can initially be developed on new
technology.

As already discussed, too many students use these weapons of mass
distraction to punch out of an interaction at the smallest hint of
boredom (or difficulty). Attention is a skill/discipline that needs to
be developed, including learning to pay attention to things that you
don't want to pay attention to. I can speak from personal experience,
that people who punch out/don't pay attention in professional meetings
are VERY much noticed (and it's held against them... I've learned that
the hard way).

In terms of multitaskers, yes, my students can handle multiple tasks at
once. And quite frankly, they don't handle any of them particularly
well. So another goal is to help them develop a "here and now" focus.

Blind faith in technology has become a crutch for student to avoid
learning fundamentals. While they assume that an answer is "out there,"
they more often than not, lack both the desire to seek it out or the
skills (or even
suspicion) to interrogate the information once they find it.

I've found that these so called "digital natives" haven't even begun to
interrogate the systems (language, practices, heuristics) that they
operate in. If anything, they are far worse at switching digital
authoring tools than we "immigrants" who were forced to internalize the
language and metaphor of the tools we used. This is a common thread that
I've heard from numerous employers -- that recent grad have a real hard
time switching between tools (sometimes even between different versions
of the same software).

I admit that any and all of these issues could be addressed through
"creative technology teaching." I've worked on trying a number of them.
All have been unsatisfactory. Frankly, I don't have time for that
anymore. I'm pulling the crutches out from under them and taking them
out of the comfort zone that technology has built for them. I'm
stripping things down and forcing communication (and reading). Computers
will be used in the lab without a doubt. But lecture/discussion
exercises will take place in "thought space" rather than letting
students retreat into digital space.

As students progress, I have no problems with allowing laptops back into
the class room and using them as tools (like I said, I plan to use my
laptop to take notes in my graduate classes). But there is a maturity
issue here. And there is also a personal responsibility issue.

To pull it all back to the initial question, there is far more to a
technology job than using technology. I have no doubt these students can
"use" technology (though not as well as they think they can).  The
majority of my students don't have the fundamental skill basis to use
technology well. While it may be true that there are different learning
modalities, the fact is part of my responsibility is to prepare these
kids to work for people who are often even less comfortable or
understanding of this behavior than I am.

- Matt
_______________________________________________
The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association
of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or
unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: 
http://www.aoir.org/