This video was made for college students, but it applies to all learners. It shows "NetGen" behaviors:
Today’s students are overloaded with information, over scheduled and disconnected from traditional classroom teaching. As we see in the video, NetGen behaviors include:
- Using personal digital devices during class
- Working on something else instead of focusing on the lecture
- Not doing the reading assignments
- Communicating non-verbally
To reach students you have to use their own weapons against them. If they want to collaborate; design a collaborative document using Google or Zoho documents. If they want to communicate non-verbally; set up a bulletin board.
My attempt to engage students was with a seventh grade typing class. Every 8th period, the students filed into a room to type practice exercises from a book into Microsoft Word. Although they are all in the same room, there is no interaction and the teacher stressed “no talking”.
I put the class “online” by creating a virtual classroom. At http://ny.globalclassroom.us/ I created the class and uploaded the student accounts. Now the students do their typing into blogs. They interact with each other by seeing each other's work. The teacher posts the typing assignments and the students then do the work. My intention is to allow the typing class to be a non-scheduled class. Students log into the classroom and do their typing assignment when they have a free period. It will no longer be necessary to schedule everyone into the same room at the same time.
In the First Chapter of “Educating the Net Generation”, Bob Pletka writes about how students are bored with current teaching methods. They have a need for a sense of community, teamwork and collaboration. Creating virtual classrooms helps because students are doing the work “on their time”, not being forced into a classroom for 45 minutes.
The associated press report today that there were nearly 4.3 million births in 2006. This is the highest number since 1961 (near the end of the baby boom). As these babies become students, how will the school accommodate them? By adding classrooms in trailers as they did in the 1970s or by adding virtual classrooms?
Another thing that students do today is to question authority. Back in the day, when a teacher told us something, we took it at face value and didn’t question the information. Now students are using the Internet to find the answers for themselves.
Now more than ever we have to realize that students are not an empty bucket that we need to fill. Time recently did an article on this subject. You can read more here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1568480,00.html
As educators, we’ve got a lot of work to do.
Kim
