This ties in nicely with a comment from a student (and I mean this, to quote a colleague, “with love and respect”) who noted with surprise that some materials I required for a class by an esteemed older scholar were really interesting and very relevant. This student had been surprised because based on appearance, this would not have been his/her assumption about what the content would contain. We ALL have made such assumptions from time to time, but it’s time to fracture the assumption that “kids today” are “digital natives” and that more seasoned contributors can’t possibly know what they’re doing with digital technology.  I loved Henry Jenkins’ post last December fracturing Prensky’s terms and I applaud Nate’s tribute to the same debunking of digital native myth:

Although the post-teaching rush is widely documented, I find myself amazed at how exhausting teaching is. No wonder teaching colleagues at my former job thought I was insane to leave the desk behind. And yes, there is a certain reprieve in knowing that when you get up in the morning, you can sit at a desk for a few hours before having to do anything taxing, like, for example, convince 16 groggy undergrads to discuss Hofstede’s theory. But I digress from my intended topic, which is the sudden renewed interest in the topic of education in general, which was pushed to the back of my agenda when I was sitting behind said desk.

I have heard the allegations that today’s kids are digital natives, which I recently remarked was not what my new experience is. I might be being a little bit harsh. While they did not immediately seem to register understanding when they created accounts on the class blog, no one claimed to not know what a computer is or what the internets are. Actually, the whole process of getting people oriented to what they needed to post and where went fairly smoothly.

I am newly aware, acutely aware, of the tension between (1) the importance of critical thinking/higher order thinking and the rootedness of these skills in a liberal arts education and a general sense that an ability to manipulate emerging technologies is fickle, and with excellent critical thinking and problem-solving skills, today’s learners will be able to adapt to changing technical skills and (2) a fairly certain understanding that though critical thinking and problem-solving can be generally learned, there are specific skills inherent in adapting to digital technologies that many do not just “pick up” and that many find intimidating, and one must gain problem-solving experience specific to the domain of digital technologies and message design and communication using these tools to become competent in those areas. And here’s a shocker, the rest of the liberal arts world doesn’t seem to be too keen on this idea. I’m not saying there’s outright hostility, but there are definitely traditional feelings even among others who teach in digital media circles.

This brings to life, really for the first time for me, a real interest in the questions being posed out there by others about the tension between education (credentialing) and education (learning). I loved Downes’ post this week about responding to criticism about Web 2.0. He comments, in regards to, I assume K-12 institutions:

Schools were designed for a particular purpose, one that is almost diametrically at odds with what ought to be the practices and objectives of a contemporary education, an education suited not only to the information age but also to the objectives of personal freedom and empowerment.

I can’t help but wonder whether this applies to higher education too. I want my teaching to be different. I want to teach undergraduates as I would adult learners, but I’ve been told that undergraduates are different, and this might be a fair assessment. (Might be–or the advice about how to relate to students is rooted in a particular hidden curriculum which may or may not be necessary). In fact, probably too many adult learners are not self-directed, a general weakness within the assumptions of adult learning theory. I want to guide students in understanding how to find information for themselves, to navigate the digital world that is everywhere and rapidly shifting, whereas I am not confident that these are goals of most higher education instructors. And if that’s the case, talk about being irrelevant. And this attitude makes this entire post paradoxical, because I do believe that there is value in the liberal arts curriculum, but the old way of understanding what information is and how we construct it just doesn’t add up in the digital world.

I hear all the time how today’s students are different, technologically savvy, etc. They are “digital natives,” whatever that means. Actually, I know what it is meant to imply: That technology is a native language for them; whereas us poor “older” people (whatever THAT means) are “stuck” speaking a creole of digital/analog. Nice try. We’re not cyborgs yet; and that analogy is flawed in many, many ways, but yet the label of the college age set lives on.

If digital native is meant to imply that students are familiar with and more or less comfortable with using a computer, I guess we could generalize and say that it is not unreasonable to expect that most college age students have used computers. BUT the kinds of things they use them for varies significantly. This expression has always bothered me, but as I am starting to meet the students I will be working with, it’s going to bother me more and more. Not because there’s any problem with coming into college to learn stuff. That’s why we go! But because there are a lot of assumptions about what kids already know about information literacy, and there are very few people at the faculty level who feel comfortable enough to teach it. I know there’s all kinds of other critical thinking skills to be learnt without a computer, and I am strong advocate of that. But on the other hand– to be a wholly effective producer, not just consumer, in the digital age–one has to be agile across a range of cyber-settings.