Transcript Inquiry Based Learning

ITS REAL
Teaching Students
Today for the
Future
What’s Up with These Kids?
 Dress
differently
 Talk differently
 Act differently
 Think differently
How are Digital Kids Different?

 Their world is High
Our world was Low
Tech
Tech
 Cell phones, Instant
 Basic
messenger, email,
communications
video games
 Information was
 Information glut
limited
 Research is a few
 Doing research was
clicks of a mouse
a physical act
button
How are Digital Kids Different?
 Today,
64% of kids come home from
school to no one
 New digital gizmos have become the
babysitter, the constant companions, and
best friends for many kids.
 Digital kids are as comfortable with virtual,
screen-to-screen relationships as they are
with face-to-face relationships.
How are Digital Kids Different?

Digital input has had a huge effect on kids
thinking patterns.


They operate at “Twitch Speed.”
Author Richard Saul Wurman estimates that
today’s college grads have spent:
 10,000 hours playing video games
 20,000 hours watching TV
 over 20,000 hours talking on the phone
 countless hours listening to music, surfing the
Web, using Instant Messenger, chat rooms and
email.
But they’ve only spent 5,000 hours reading and
11,000 hours attending school!
How are Digital Kids Different?

Eighty-two percent of American kids play video
games on a regular basis - an average of 8.2
hours a week.
 Today’s kids have access to computers, remote
controls, the Internet, email, pagers, cell phones,
MP3 players, CDs, DVDs, video games, Palm
Pilots and digital cameras.
 Today’s kids, the Millennium generation, have
never experienced a time where these digital
wonders haven’t existed.
Summarizing the real digital
divide…

Digital Native learners prefer
 receiving info quickly from
multiple multimedia
sources
 parallel processing and
multi-tasking
 processing pictures,
sounds and video before
text
 random access to
hyperlinked multimedia
information

Many teachers prefer




slow and controlled
release of info from
limited sources.
singular processing and
one thing at a time
to provide text before
pictures, sounds and
video
to provide information
linearly, logically and
sequentially
Summarizing the real digital
divide
 Many teachers prefer
 Digital Native learners prefer




interact/network
simultaneously with many
others
to learn “just-in-time”
instant gratification and
instant rewards
learning that is relevant,
instantly useful and fun




students to work
independently rather
than network and
interact
prefer to teach “justin-case” (it’s on the
exam).
deferred gratification
and deferred rewards.
to teach to the
curriculum guide and
standardized tests.
What Should We Do?
 Accept
the fact that we’re DSL
 Pay attention to what the research is
telling us.

Use the brain research and what cognitive
psychology has shown us about learning to
make sound educational decisions for our
kids
 Implement
rigorous curriculum and
effective instructional models
Schools must become a place where students are
actively engaged in constructing their own knowledge
and know how, develop an understanding and the
ability to apply key content concepts and ideas,
explore dynamically, discover, pose questions and
question answers, solve problems, engage in complex
tasks that enable them to address essential questions
and participate in the processes that make up
intellectual accomplishment, tasks that are generally
inquiry driven, span different media, link different
disciplines, have more than one right answer, multiple
routes to each of these answers, an understandable
purpose and a connection to the real world outside
school.
Ian Jukes
Understanding Digital Kids