Restless digital natives
Colin Campbell
The impact on learning from Bridging the Gap
the spaces, flows and Conference
networks of the internet Nov 2009

This space of flows enables a multitude of
actors to reconfigure access to information,
people, services and technologies.
Through the Network (of
Networks) – the Fifth Estate
by William H. Dutton
Professor of Internet Studies,
Oxford Internet Institute

Questions I’d like to discuss
1. How useful is the term ‘digitial natives’?
2. What can we learn from recent studies into the ways
young people are using technology?
3. What are useful habits to adopt in our digital age?
4. Where is learning going?

What I am going to talk about?
1. How useful is the term ‘digitial natives’?

Web 2.0, 3.0.... how do you react to videos like the
one we just watched?

Digital native?

notions of digital natives vs digital
immigrants can inhibit understanding

Digital
native?
Digital
native?

Digital
childhood?

2. What can we learn from recent studies of the ways
young people are using technology?

Slide ‘borrowed’ from Ewan McIntosh (apologies)

Slide ‘borrowed’ from Ewan McIntosh (apologies)

Living and Learning with New The research was a joint project of
the University of Southern California and the University
of California, Berkeley.
Research Summary
Media: Summary of Findings Over three years, University of California, Irvine
researcher Mizuko Ito and her team interviewed over
800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000
hours of online observations as part of the most extensive
from the Digital Youth Project U.S. study of youth media use.
Hanging around - people they know
increased
Messing about - video, images, complexity
mashing
higher order
Geeking Out - special interest groups thinking
(beyond their local social network) -
skills
critiquing, creating, analysing

Living and Learning with New The research was a joint project of
the University of Southern California and the University
of California, Berkeley.
Media: Summary of Findings Research Summary
Over three years, University of California, Irvine
researcher Mizuko Ito and her team interviewed over
800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000
from the Digital Youth Project hours of online observations as part of the most extensive
U.S. study of youth media use.
Conclusion
Peer-based learning has unique properties that
suggest alternatives to formal instruction, influence
of respected peers
There are, of course, idiosyncratic and distinctly
varied levels of use of digital tools and social
networks

Walled Gardens?

New Millenium Learners 2009
The OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
launched the New Millennium Learners (NML) project in 2007. It has the
global aim of investigating the effects of digital technologies on school-
age learners and providing recommendations on the most appropriate
institutional and policy responses from the education sector.
Cultural capital crucial
No clear links between technology use and academic
achievement (with the exception of some writing skills)
Access key to social inclusion

Slide ‘borrowed’ from Ewan McIntosh (apologies)

Slide ‘borrowed’ from Ewan McIntosh (apologies)

Both studies show the dominant use is
young people interacting socially online
and establishing norms within groups
Access to these spaces important for
social interaction
Important difference here from previous
generations = digital childhood

Using technology is instinctive but not in itself
‘motivating’ for students

pedagogy has to be
adaptable to
accomodate different
types and levels of
learner

Discussion ?

4. What are the possible next steps for learning?

Pedagogy
Technology

Giles and musical
overload

“I’ve given up trying to keep up but it’s better, I’m just focusing on arranging better
events”
Giles, music promoter

You don’t need to know all the stops
but you need to be able to fair-adjust

habits and key ‘big’ skills

Howard Rheingold on media litercies
http://vimeo.com/5659525
#1 Attention
#2 Participation
#3 Collaboration
#4 Network Savvy
#5 Critical Consumption
#1 Global awareness
#2 Information
processing
#3 Self-directed

Traditional Contemporary
schooling schools
Factory/ industry model Slow shift towards
class rank inquiry based learning
delivered curriculum assessment for learning
transmission fixed rubrics and criteria
textbook focus teacher guided
fixed curriculum group tasks
teacher led

http://video.google.com/videoplay?
docid=-4126240905912531540#

Future schools
self-directed teachers guiding, provoking
peer-mentoring co-conspirators
essential literacies complex not complicated
mutual inquiry

Are the ‘geeked out’ and highly web-
connected guilty of painting a subjective
even idealised picture here?
Stephen Downes: National Research Council, Institute for
Information Technology, Canada

“Here's my problem with your ideology, Stephen,
which appears to me to be even more radical than
constructivism and tries not only to describe or
defend a new epistemology, but appears to disrupt
social systems as well, in the name of some putative
technocommunism that will reign supreme on the
Internet with everybody working for nothing and
getting everything for free and living happily ever
after.”
catfitz on Stephen’s blog

Predicts technology will
break the pattern of failed
school changes and push
schools into a new
paradigm.
Clayton Christensen
Harvard Business School

Where next for
learning spaces and
schools?

Digital Allotments

Images (all from flickr)
Trailing Above North Cascades National Park in a Meteor Shower by Fort Photo
Happy Spaceman (Loves Engrish) by Network Osaka
Road Block by giugesco
Shadow Man on the Bakerloo line by Semi-detached
The Things You Own, End Up Owning You by Willie Chiang