The "old people" doing educational research today are finding one startling fact - the world our students live in is changing more rapidly than ever before. Contrary to the past, when those born at the turn of the century had witnessed a tremendous industrial shift by the time they were 70 or 80, today's teenagers will witness an even greater technological shift before they are 25.
Think back to six or seven years ago when only a handful of teenagers had text messaging. Today the majority have cell phones, regardless of income level, and texting is quicker than email. Email, which used to be a popular way to communicate, has now given way to social networking sites via email, such as Facebook and Twitter, but straight out emailing is considered Old School.
Educational expert in brain research, Marcia Tate, cites recent medical studies that indicate the visual cortex of young people has changed. So the techno world of Gameboys, Playstations, and Wiis is changing the way students view the world...literally. Their visual cortex is thicker than ours, possibly indicating more activity in that area of the brain.
Harvard MBA Mark Prensky, who also holds a Masters in Teaching from Yale, paints a stark picture of the difference between the Digital Natives (young people who have grown up on video games and computer toys) and Digital Immigrants, we who have lived through the switch from black and white to color to high def TV, transistor radios, mono to stereo, eight tracks to cassettes to CDs to iPods, Beta or VHS to DVD and Blue Ray, Polaroids to digital photography. Hear what Prensky has to say in a 2009 lecture or visit his website to learn more:
http://www.marcprensky.com/speaking/default.asp
In short, the whole, huge world has been opened up by tiny nano-technology. How will we keep up and should we? As the ancient Greeks and Romans said, there is nothing pernament except change. It's intersting that the Latin quote "Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis," or "The times change and we must change with them," is attributable to Lothair I, one of the Carolignian emperors living around 855 A.D., as people were just pulling away from the Dark Ages and beginning to understand again that education and reading are important.
So should we embrace this new type of teenager and this new, inevitable change? I say we are just waking up from a long Dark Age. It frightens me what might happen to civilization, but the possibilities for changing human existence and essential understandings for the good are exciting and staggering. To quote this geration's icon, Buzz Lightyear - "To infinity and beyond!" Let's just hope the elctricity doesn't go out.
.......Melony
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