Learners’ voices about ICT uses
17/07/2009, Giessen – Emanuele Rapetti – NewMinELab – USI Lugano (CH)
Web as culture

NewMinELab Manifesto
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Web as culture

Agenda
1. Intro
2. The core of the
INTRO
problem
3. DIGITAL NATIVES &
pedagogical needs “Professor,
4. DIGITAL are you going to give lesson
TECHNOLOGIES &
learning experiences or to show us a Powerpoint?”
5. Our research
6. Main findings
7. Conclusions
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Web as culture

2. The core
of the problem
• “Digital natives”
 implicate “digital pedagogy”?
• Which kind of gap between
– Digital native learners
– Digital immigrant teacher
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Web as culture

Labelling our students
Net
Generation generation
Y (or Screen New
Digital
Millennials) generation millennium
natives
learners
[Prensky] [Howe & Strauss] Net-agers (Pedrò, OECD-CERI)
[Junco &
Mastrodicasa,
Rivoltella, others]
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Web as culture

The sly adoption
of this model
Key-points:
-Teachers have to stay up-to-date
with technologies development
-Students need learning
experiences that fit with their
cognitive style
-Task-oriented
-Multitasking
-Collaborative
-Fast
-Focused
-Sharing-based
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Web as culture

3. DIGITAL NATIVES &
pedagogical needs
• Is it anthropologically and pedagogically
correct to ever adapt the didactic to the
learners’ characteristics?
 The dialogue between
• Pedagogical needs
• Learners’ wishes
– In a digital world
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Web as culture

4. ICT & learning
experiences
• ICT Web (2.0) based are a great arousal for
– experiences like
• sharing
• communication
• participation
...and digital natives exploit them sistematically
• But, obviously
– not all learning experience can be meant to be
• Collaborative
• Sharing-based
• task oriented
• fast
• Focused
• ...
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Web as culture

Enlarging or changing
the paradigm?
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Web as culture

5. Our research
• A qualitative perspective
• Observing the topic not in a US-centred way
• Online questionnaire about ICT use and
appropriation + not-structured interviews
• Students of Communication Faculty (USI)
– [then italian students of Engineering (Politecnico
di Milano-Campus of Como)]
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Web as culture

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Web as culture

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6. Main findings
• e-learning doesn’t mean an e-didactic
 both students and teachers prefer to use ICT not
like “tools for a new didactic”, but like “new tools”
for a traditional didactic
• the devices widely used are substantially the
same of the nineties
• the “web 2.0 style” hasn’t yet impacted
structurally people attitude in learning (miles away to
cyborg-students)
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Web as culture

• (in l. e.) WWW is habitually used to
communicate, to share and to gather
informations
• a “web culture” exists side by side to a formal
one in the university context
• e-learning is considered to play an important
role in university learning (but it’s also
thought like not necessary one)
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Web as culture

Importance
of e-learning
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Web as culture

7. Conclusions
Educational processes misleaded
with technological development
and e-learning diffusion
NO to Technological determinism
( à la page phenomenon)
The trap of generational myth
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Web as culture

open-teaching
in which student is co-author because
technologically skilled BUT the teacher
remains the MAGIS-TER
YES to E-learning
When it is founded on pedagogical needs
Autonomous learner & fading teacher
Understanding this relationship in a correct
temporal dynamics
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Web as culture

Questions?? ?
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http://www.youtube.com/user/majid7s#pla
y/all/uploads-all/2/SRdx7Bq3ZXo
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