Here's a quote I find fascinating:
“The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains. Daily exposure to high technology--computers, smart phones, video games, search engines like Google and Yahoo--stimulates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones. Because of the current technological revolution, our brains are evolving right now--at a speed like never before.” ~ Gary Small, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind
There are quite a few other recent books about this subject. Another one I'd particularly recommend is The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. There's a great essay by him from The Atlantic that formed the basis of this book. You can find the essay here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/.
He raises some really fascinating points about how the internet is changing the way we learn and the ways our brains function. His ultimate point is that Google (and computers and the internet) are not making us think less; rather, they are changing the way we think. Likewise, I would say that students don't learn less than they once did; they learn differently.
I didn't grow up with the internet. I didn't have a network connection until I was in college. My brain is being slowly rewired by the internet; however, many of my students have had internet access in their homes as long as they can remember, so their brains were wired (not rewired) by the internet. A question for me, then, is how must I change or adapt my teaching strategies to address my courses to newer generations of students. If newer generations of students learn differently, must I also teach differently?
Jesse,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link to Carr's article. I think it packed a ton of terrific information and ideas. I learned more in the 15 minutes it took me to read it than in an entire semester at a doctoral history of media course at a school of journalism where I feel I wasted $1,000.00. So that is an example of how wonderful the Internet can be.
But I completely agree with the assessment that our minds and thought processes conform to the media. In the article I particularly enjoyed the examples of the clock, type writer, and even to writing itself!
Carr laments the potential loss of concentration and with this the ability to think deeply. It is not that I disagree with the fact that this may me happening, but I have to think that there are other ways to think deeply and make meaningful connections. I find that the new web tools help us be more creative and produce more knowledge than we did before.
The key in education would be to create assignments and activities that are meaningful and foster "deep" thinking to take us beyond the "wide" thinking that we seem to do with "tripping on links" as Carr puts it.
I think we can do that.
Thanks for your blog, Jesse. I became so captivated by your thoughts that I had to write one about a Teacherbot(teacher2.0?).
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