The Only Net-Gen Nonsense
Is coming from those who spend their time worrying about a research basis for a phenomenon that is easily observable in any classroom, followed very closely by those who presume that the net-gen is determined by biology. I still can’t post comments to George’s blog, so I will respond to his Net Gen Nonsense post here.
George: The Net Gen Nonsense blog fits right in, of course, with your predisposition– perhaps borne of seeing too much extremism ala Prensky– to be against the notion that learners are changing. And you seem to equate the idea, again ala Prensky, with being mostly– or even significantly– biological.
I suspect that we will see, in retrospect, that there are biological and neurological changes occurring due to technological changes, but it’s not really important. The remonstrations about the evidence remind me of scientists concluding that bumblebees can’t fly and philosophers concluding that there is no physical reality. Like Berkeley, I refute you thus, with the students I teach every term… but I will refrain from kicking them as proof!
More importantly, a whole lot of learning is not about biology but about cognition and the mental processes built on top of that biology. The two points with which you conclude your post (”1) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and create information, and 2) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and connect to each other.”) are changes in learners, and they are changes that happen as a result of living in a very different and quickly changing technologically mediated environment than others. Fight it all you want, but those learners are different. It has nothing to do with age and the biological origins are at best unclear… but it is immaterial. Anyone who pays attention to their students can see this in the divide they face within their classes between the haves and knows and the have not/know nots. Whatever the label, a host of educators nod in recognition of the characteristics regardless of the question of the origins, which has always been my central point in this debate: I don’t care about the reasons as much as I care about the solutions, and I won’t discount what I see and experience because the research (which hasn’t been an enviable guide when it comes to education so far, but that’s a different discussion) isn’t there or isn’t unclear. A refutation would make a difference, but there’s an obvious reason why there isn’t one, and I don’t mean the philosophical bit about proving a negative.
I don’t know how much you teach and how many of those you teach are adolescents, but clearly you see these changes or you wouldn’t so explicitly point out some of the conditions effecting that change in your two concluding points. It’s not as if all of us who teach are likely to be suffering a mass delusion and I think too many people with too many different, varying backgrounds when it comes to experience teaching and knowledge of technology and communication hear the squeaky wheel to be convinced that it’s just an illusion they are bringing to the table.
June 7th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
In the end I do have to admit, though, that I think George and I would agree that the more important thing to address are the changed/changing conditions and how we teach. We ignore them at our own peril.
June 7th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
That may be the best single sentence I have ever read in any blog ever. period.
June 7th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I have a list of people and irrelevant things which I fervently wish would be banished to a deserted island with no chance of ever returning or ever gaining attention again.
This list includes Michael Jackson, Learning Objects, Brittany Spears, Microsoft, and newly added… the natives/immigrants blather (toss Presnky in for a bonus).
June 7th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Ignore the blather all you want. Ignore the fact that the landscape of learners is changing as a response to technology and you are an ostrich with your head in the sand. You know better.
On my list to dispose of are people who are so intent on their abstract principles for or against theory– who are so proud of their dissonant pride– that they are happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater as long as it supports their feeble attempt at a pose of independence…
June 7th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Or, another way to put it– if you want to insult me and accuse me of blathering, do it on your own fucking blog!
June 8th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Yes, there are differences between every generation, but in the case of the digital generation it seems to have reached mythic proportions. Last year I wrote 4 posts on this topic, and rather than repeat myself here, I welcome you to read them, and I would appreciate hearing what you think in a followup post on your blog. I’m open to rethinking my positions. If you’d like that, you might start with this post (the other posts are linked to at the bottom): http://secondlanguagewriting.com/explorations/Archives/2007/August/TheMythsoftheDigitalGene.html
June 8th, 2008 at 8:14 am
I’ll take a look at your posts soon (traveling today). I will say right from the start that I don’t believe the characteristics that I think we should be paying attention to have much to do with age and only a small amount to do with biology… the age generalization is the one I find most damaging because it provides a natural escape clause…
June 8th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Hey Chris,
First – I have been mastered by my blog. I’m now actively soliciting other platforms. I have no idea why it won’t accept comments. I’ve spun dials, flicked switches…all to no avail.
Your Berkeley refutation is perfect! Every day, the students we see in our classrooms are evidence that the world is changing. I’m just not sure that the existing research on the subject provides enough evidence to make “changed learners” the basis for systemic changes. On the other hand, if I accept your statement that my final two points (how we interact with information and how we interact with each other) to be functions of digital learners, that changes everything
. But, most literature on immigrants/natives draws conclusions like “learners are biologically different” or “learners have to power down when they come to class”…as well as suggesting learners relate different to each other and information. While I agree with the latter, I’m unsure about the former statements as I don’t think research beyond anecdotal experiences supports it.
As I noted at the CNIE conference where another individual addressed digital learners, her examples for refuting the concept were based almost entirely on anecdotal evidence (i.e. “do your own kids do this?”).
As you likely know, I’m a conflicted, even confused, thinker. I appreciate opposites to what I believe or, for that matter, even know to be true. I like knowing points for and against. That’s why I appreciated Keen’s voice being added to the debate of culture. Do I agree with him? No. But I like knowing that someone out there is challenging status quo. Naysayers are important
.
To this end, while the blog title “Net Gen Nonsense” is a bit too extreme, dialogue in academic circles is important. Much of the conversation of net gen to date has happened through conferences/blogs. Now, as traditional academics are awakening to these conversations, they are seeking to impose their means of sense-making on existing/accepted theories – namely empirical evidence. It’s important to note as well, that lack of evidence is not the same as evidence against. At this point, even people like Bullen are saying “empirical evidence doesn’t support this”…they are not saying it’s completely false.
When we argued a few months ago about Prensky, your point was very valid: Prensky provided tools/language to think about learners today. It shook people out of their comfort zone. It gave name/face to a phenomenon most people had only experienced as a feeling/sensation.
George
June 9th, 2008 at 6:16 am
To generalize widely, there seems to be a pretty solid difference between those who use digital immigrant/digital native terminology and those who talk about the netgen. The former group seems more intent on attributing characteristics they are observing to biology and age where I would attribute it to access and experience. That’s why I tend to use the latter term unless I am specifically making a point about geographic and cultural natives/immigrants…
I do feel more and more that the question of the source of learner change is both fraught with difficulty due to the nature/nurture confound but also that different ideas of the how and why are almost distinctions without a difference. I tend to discount technological determinism, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe that the change in the information landscape and the increasing ubiquity of new media and information channels doesn’t have serious effects on learners…
The analogy I came up with a few days ago was that of eating. People eat very differently in times of abundance than scarcity. Their biology doesn’t significantly change (though it does some), but it would be foolish to look around and argue that people aren’t really eating differently, it’s just a change in their food context. It would be wiser to recognize that the socioeconomic context is an important factor to consider when it comes to nutrition and try to teach proper eating habits in an environment that is not just no longer one of hunting and gathering, but one that is very different for most of us from even 50 years ago.
Which is why I take your closing two points as support that learners are changing. And if we teach properly to the environment we will be teaching properly for those changes– more properly, in fact, because we will be introducing our own changes to help the students develop a posture and disposition when it comes to information and communication.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:50 am
One problem I have with the terms digital native/immigrant is its metaphoric connection to language learners. There’s more than enough research that shows that people who learn a second language after the age of 6 do not process the second language the way they do a first language.
Now, what percentage of youngsters today grow up digital before the age of 6? No doubt, there are a few, but likely the majority begin around the age of 6 and up. In such a case, then, the analogy to language learning would assert that these learners are not digital natives, which throws a wrench into the claims of those proposing a digital native/immigrant distinction for learning.
And even for those beginning video games or other digital things before the age of 6, then perhaps they could be considered digital natives at those specific items, but like language learners, as they move to a 2nd or 3rd or more electronic “language,” if it occurs after the age of 6, then they are digital immigrants for the specific electronic “language”.
The point is the digital native/immigrant terms hype the reality of what is occurring. Although age affects the ability to acquire new experiences easily, Chris’s position on experience and access makes sense to me. In fact, it explains well why students without much access to computers can text-message like “natives” but have problems, at least in my classes, managing the different aspects of a weblog or wiki. And thus, we need to avoid stereotyping and lumping all of our students together into a single digital “native” learner mold and all of us older-than-teenager folks into a single class of digital “immigrants”. Such dichotomies do not reflect reality.
One other problem I have, as indicated in my posts on my blog, is the claim of digital natives’ ability to multitask. Everything I’ve read in the research shows that the ability to learn and retain information, whether by a digital native or immigrant, decreases considerably when multitasking.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I like your new blog theme.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
[...] The Only Net-Gen Nonsense : Ruminate [...]
June 10th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Well, I didn’t know that scientists claimed that bumblebees couldn’t fly. If they did, this is all the more reason to examine claims critically. I do not doubt that the current generation is different from the previous. All generations differ from each other in some ways. It would be foolish to argue otherwise. Social, economic and technological conditions change and these shape who we are and how we think and behave.
What I take issue with is are the sweeping, apparently unsubstantiated, claims that are made:
a) about the defining characteristics of this generation and,
b) the implications these have for how we teach.
I do not dismiss practitioner knowledge. All teachers should be adjusting what they do based on what they observe in their classrooms. But to generalize that to an entire generation and then propose and make widespread institutional changes based on these anecdotal observations is irresponsible. It is also irresponsible for educators to continue to blindly accept these claims without examining the evidence.
As George Siemens points out in his earlier response, I am not refuting the claims, I am only saying the evidence doesn’t support the claims. And as I have said in my presentations, I am not saying we shouldn’t be critically examining how we teach and responding appropriately to our learners, but this should be based on evidence not on techno-utopian net gen hype.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:32 am
My concern about the “net-gen” conversation is that people use this as an excuse for why the system is failing kids. “They’re different”, “we don’t understand them” — it’s all too easy.
I have the same concern for never-ending research that never impacts practice. “Let’s wait for the next study” is also a delaying tactic.
Critically examining how we teach (as George says) is obviously important, but should NOT be done because we think kids have changed, which would imply that we think it was being done properly before. It should be done because it’s the right thing to do for any era and all children, whether they are highly exposed to digital technology or not.
June 15th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I haven’t read it yet, but this online article in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology may be of interest: First year students’ experiences with technology: Are they really digital natives? (pdf).
June 18th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
[...] Lott takes issue with those who dismiss netgen learners: “I suspect that we will see, in retrospect, that there are biological and neurological [...]