Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Teachers, Youth and Technology

Stephanie Rieger posed some good points and questions recently in a comment to a post I made about digital immigrants and digital natives. Rather than post my reply as a follow-up comment, I am posting as this as a new topic. Your feedback on this will be welcome!

First, I agree that TIME seems like the most significant challenge in the K-12 classroom today. The schedule for teachers and students has remained relatively constant for at least 100 years, but the quantity of curriculum and other demands on everyone’s time have skyrocketed. David Warlick, in his book “Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century,” also notes that TIME is one of the biggest challenges teachers everywhere face when it comes to integrating technology and preparing students for their future, which will certainly be quite digital and technological in nature.

At some point (hopefully the not too distant future) schools have to look at altering their schedules to account for this. I heard Alan November talk about a school in Singapore (I think) about a year ago which was making a dramatic change: students were in traditional “class” just half the day, the other half they worked in their “offices” on projects and assignments. That is pretty radical, but I think schools are going to have to take drastic measures soon if we are going to be serious about preparing students for the flat world in which we live.

Second response I have is that our situation is interesting because young people tend to be the main ones who make time to PLAY with technology. During these times of “play” young people tend to learn the most. I think I heard this from Marc Prensky in his November keynote at the New Hampshire tech conference. Most young people (digital natives in Prensky’s lexicon) tend to be intrinsically motivated to “play” with technology. Many if not most K-12 teachers today are not. Technology is something teachers have to “do” as far as email and online gradebooks go, but not something many teachers choose to do for fun. (I don’t put myself in this group, of course, but I think I am an anomaly because of this in our cadre of current educators.)

Stephanie asks rhetorically if “our best resource may become kids themselves?” I think she is probably correct. The Generation YES project is one successful international initiative I know about that has this assumption at the core of its educational technology philosophy.

Stephanie asks “what tools and applications would children most like to use (for fun, creativity, learning, and in their spare time) if given the choice?” The answer likely depends greatly on the age and gender of the young person, as well as their home access level to technology and broadband Internet. Video games, instant messaging, downloading music, and using social networking websites like Xanga and MySpace seem to be some of the most likely answers. The recent article “The MySpace Generation: They live online. They buy online. They play online. Their power is growing” provides much more detail about why these social networking online environments are so popular and will likely be even more so in the future.

Perhaps even more important than the question Stephanie poses is this one: What can educators do to utilize the intrinsic motivation students have to communicate and “play” with technological resources, to further educational goals and desired outcomes for students? I have some ideas about this, but I am curious what your thoughts are.

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