MySpace Tips and TricksMySpace layouts, Backgrounds and Tools

New Learning Styles

The desire to multitask and be constantly connected to the network and friends, and the hunger for immediate results influence how young people interact with the world today – whether at school or at work or at home or while traveling – and should be taken into account by both educators and employers. However, the ways in which young people today are different as students may be the most fundamental change we need to understand as we consider hot to close the gap in overall performance. The use of Internet and other digital technologies has transformed both as young people learn today and how they learn.

Learning through multimedia and connection with others

Young adults who grew up in the network are accustomed to multimedia learning experiences rather than simply interact with the text. According to the Oblingers, "Researchers report Net Gen students refuse to read large amounts of text, whether a long reading assignment or lengthy instructions. In a study that altered the instructions of a phased approach based on text-to-step-one that uses a graphic design, the refusal to make the task fell and post-test scores increase. "My interviews with students, as well as his high school and university teachers confirm that Students are increasingly impatient with the conference style of learning and reliance on textbooks is most desired information and class discussions.

The Net Generation much prefers doing research on the Internet rather than in stacks of library books – partly due to the different experience it offers. "The prose is supplemented by song. The photographs are accompanied by video. Topics are even became online surveys and discussions. For Red Gen, almost all parts of life are presented in multimedia format, "writes Carie Windham." To keep our attention in the classroom, a similar approach is necessary. Power must put aside the idea of dying than a lecture and subsequent reading assignment are sufficient to teach the lesson. Instead, the Net Generation responds to a variety of media such as television, audio, animation, and text. "

Once you are on the Internet for information, Net Gen Students develop a fundamental skill in what John Seely Brown called "navigation information." According to Brown, "The real literacy future involves the ability to be your own personal reference librarian to learn how to navigate through spaces that complex information and feel comfortable doing so. "Navigation" may well be the main form of literacy for the 21st century. "

And Jason Frand UCLA notes, college students today want to be connected to others, as well as the different types of sources of information, while learning. "Students with an information age mindset expect education to emphasize the learning process rather than a canon of knowledge. They want to be part of learning communities, with hubs and spokes of the students, rejecting the paradigm of television broadcast (or the note taker in the classroom .)"''

Discovery Learning as

The learning experience or conducting research on the Web is radically different from learning in the classroom or library research. As we are all now aware, on the Internet to write a search string, which results are shown to hundreds or thousands of potential information sources not only context, but also video, audio and graphics. Click on the links, in turn, have other links you can follow. You can find the name of a person or a book or theme you want to learn more about, so you perform a new search, which takes you to a new treasure treasure trove of information and pictures, with a number additional links. He is an active, dynamic, nonlinear, based on the discovery of processes such as traveling along a web moving in a straight line from point A to point B. As John Seely Brown writes: "Most of us experience a form of learning in school-based authority oriented conference. Now with an incredible amount of information available through the web, we find a "new" kind of learning assuming pre-eminence – is based learning discovery. We are constantly discovering new things as they navigate through the emerging digital libraries. "In fact, surf the net and learning fuse entertainment, the creation of "infotainment." By confirming the observation of Brown, a young woman in the focus group admitted that I mentioned earlier Googles themes for fun: "There is a day that goes by that I do not Google do something – anything. Not even when I have to Google something for school. I Google everything. If I'm bored, I Google something about my life. "

John Beck and Mitchell Wade, have studied the players "- that young people who play video games are called. In his book The Kids are well, they report that the players (who, according to his research, representing 92 percent of the teenage population), "learning differently. His gaming experience … Emphasizes independent problem solving and the rapid acquisition of technical skills, rather than constant attention to the subtleties of Shakespeare or calculus. James Paul Gee has also studied the players, and in What Video Games have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy writes that "video game players to think like scientists. The game is based on a cycle 'hypothesis, explore the world, obtain feedback, reflect on the results, probe for best results, a typical cycle of experimental science.

When PJ Blankenhorn led the Boston Center for Adult Education, was discussing proposals for new courses to the young staff. "Some people have requested a class on the use of PDAs," said PJ. "What do you think? "The staff member, a young man about 20 years, looked in amazement at my wife, and finally said," Why would someone need to take a course to learn that? "

John Seely Brown comments help us to make sense of this interaction. "My generation does not tend to want to try things unless or until we already know how to use them, "he writes." If we do not know how to use any device or software, our instinct is to reach for a manual or take a course or call an expert. Believe me, the hand of a hand or suggest a course of 15-year-old and think you're a dinosaur. They want to turn the thing goes in there, mud around and see what work. Today's children get on the Web and link, lurk and see how other people are doing things, and then try it for themselves.

Learn through building

New developments on the web are giving young people a set of experiences that create a hunger for something more than learning discovery. Web 2.0 – as is often called to differentiate Web today use the Internet use at the beginning, which was mainly as a source of information – offers an extraordinary number opportunities to exercise a passion to create. Today, someone with a rudimentary knowledge of how the Internet can web content to fashion new will be seen by all users.

Whether creating your own web page on MySpace or Facebook or upload your band or share your photo album or publish just a video shoot with his cell phone on YouTube or contributing to a Wikipedia entry or writing a blog about what they think or what you experience or review of a film, an album, a product, service, or a restaurant, Web 2.0 is a vast and ever expanding palate for personal creativity and personal expression – especially for young people growing up today. According to Rosen @ research, the most common activity for users of MySpace includes posting new pictures and videos on their personal websites. An astonishing 88 percent of MySpace users have added photos and video content its pages.

Precautions

Nothing I have described above is necessarily intend to suggest that this evolution in the way young people Today interact with the world and learning are all positive. For each portal, there are just as important to care or worry. Let's review some of the concerns that were raised in relation to the trends noted above:

Multitasking and constantly connected.

While multitasking may be a useful skill and a change comfortable in performing routine tasks, the practice seems to have a cost. According to Russell Poldrack, associate professor of psychology at the University of California in Los Angeles, who co-authored a study that examined multitasking and brain activity, "multitasking can not be generating the same knowledge that would if they were in focus. While multitasking makes them [the students] feel they are being more efficient, research suggests that there is very little that can making involving multiple tasks can be as good except when you're multitasking. "Linda Stone agrees." Like so many other things, in small doses, continuous partial attention can be a very functional behavior. However, in large doses, it contributes to a stressful lifestyle, working in the administration crisis, and a compromised ability to reflect, to make decisions and think creatively. In a 24 / 7, always in the world, continuous partial attention used as our dominant attention mode contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and the feeling of being unfulfilled. We are very accessible, are inaccessible. "From Indeed, connecting young people through sites like MySpace and Facebook can be used sometimes in ways that are deeply hurtful. Cyberbullying has become a growing concern for school administrators. cyberpredators adults are another concern. As I talked with young people who have collected hundreds new friends online through Facebook or MySpace, I wondered to what extent differ from electronic friend, whom I never met and can out of their lives in a nanosecond, and a friend in person, with whom one shares gain confidence and experience over time.

Instant gratification and speed of light.

You will recall that the young man who I stressed at the beginning of this chapter noted that the use of rapid technologies "has made we are less patient, more demanding. I do not want to wait for anything. "Later during the same period of focus group sessions, students have expressed concern about over-reliance on cell phones and instant messaging may be eroding social skills. "People do not both face to face talks, "said a young woman. Another added:" You know, when you go to someone's house for dinner with your family, you have to know how talk to them, to interact. I worry that we lose our ability to relate to people who are different than us. "

Learning Through multimedia and connection with others.

The Oblingers, quoted earlier in this chapter, have noticed the impatience of youth-based learning text. Tracy Mitrano, who works in the Office of Information Technologies at Cornell University, worries about the ways in which "this generation he has entertained to death. "And Susan meters, which occupies a similar position at the University of Southern California and is also a professor in visual communication, he said that college students today, "the media are encouraged, but not necessarily the media read or write." These researchers are concerned that young people can avoid learning book because they have been raised in media it's more fun. Meters even stated that being a consumer media does not necessarily mean that one has developed the capacity to really understand the media and think critically about what you are experiencing. preference of young people about learning with peers can also be problematic when you need to work on something that just – as a research for long periods of time in order to obtain the best result.

Learning as Discovery.

This style of learning is much more attractive than others forms of learning, and there is a great deal of research showing that leads to a deeper understanding of the basics of math and science compared with simple memorization. However, not everything can be learned through discovery. We do not "discover" the multiplication tables, for example. We have memorize. And while we will better understand the concept of an ecosystem through observation and experimentation, we must first know something about the processes commodities such as photosynthesis. Similarly, some basic knowledge of geography and history, essential to an informed citizenry, we can win only with memorization. Finally, the constant desire to "do" and interact often comes at the expense of contemplation and reflection – essential aspects of learning and growth.

Learning by creation.

Quality is also an issue in these times when everyone can pull anything on the Internet. Flooded with a growing flood of "creative" work coming at them from thousands of websites, how young people learn to discern the difference between impulsive forms of expression in relation to works of art that are the product of training and discipline? This is one aspect of what it meant Meters to be "literate." And Carie Windham concerns about the impact of all young creative shortcuts taken when IM each other. "I've seen some messages from my brother to his friends, and I have absolutely no idea of what is written – which is perhaps the point anyway. But he does not know how to spell. When I try to tell you that's not the way you write the word, he simply says: "Well, it's in IM. I was an English major, and I worry that he never knows how to use the language correctly."

The above is an excerpt from the book The gap in overall performance, why even our best schools do not teach the new survival skills our children need – What can we do about it?
by Tony Wagner
Published by Basic Books, August 2008, $ 26.95US / $ 28.95CAN; 978-0-465-00229-0
Copyright © 2008 Tony Wagner

About the Author

Tony Wagner is co-director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He consults to schools, districts, and foundations and served as Senior Advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has appeared on The Today Show, NPR, McNeil/ Lehrer News Hour and writes for Education Week. A former high school teacher and principal, he is the author of Change Leadership, Making the Grade, and How Schools Change. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

LIBR 287 – David Lee King & Course overview – 1/26/09