Learning Strategies for the Media Generation Coping with Homo Zappiens

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Learning Strategies for the Media Generation
Coping with Homo Zappiens
Wim Veen
Centre for Education Technology
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Who is Homo Zappiens
The generation using three tiny devices from
early childhood on
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Who is Homo Zappiens

• It is the generation playing games
• Riven, Atlantis, Planetarion, Unreal Tournament,
  BW, PlayStations I and II
• Communicating with SMS, MSN, chatrooms
• The generation that mixes f2f and virtual friends
  

• The generation for which learning is playing and
  having fun

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Playing games in worldwide teams
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Chatting in three rooms at a time with different
electronic personalities
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Sending e-cards including text, music, voice,
and images
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Finding out about the latest earthquakes
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Who is Homo Zappiens

• The generation that invents games
• Without winners or losers, without a clear start
  or end, and creating their own rules and changing
  them whenever they like

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Who is Homo Zappiens

• The generation that is skeelering up the stairs,
  instead of down the stairs
• The generation that is surfing the waves of the
  sea, and snowboarding in stead of skiing.

The generation considering school as a meeting
place rather than a learning place
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Schools Complaining Homo Zappiens

• Short attention spans
• They cannot even listen for more than 5 minutes!
• Hyper active behavior
• They cannot concentrate on one task at a time!
• No discipline
• Crushing their calculators, forgetting their
  textbooks, not passing on letters from school to
  their parents!
• No respect
• They consider teachers as their equals!

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In stead of looking at children from a point of
view what they should do according to their
parents and teachers, why not looking at them
from the point of view what they actually do?
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Homo Zappiens at Work
Multi-tasking
Integrated scanning skills
Processing discontinued information
Non-linear approaches
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Homo Zappiens at Work
Multi-tasking
Integrated scanning skills
Processing discontinued information
Non-linear approaches
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Scanning texts, sounds, movement, colours, and
images
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Integrated scanning skills
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Homo Zappiens at Work
Multi-tasking
Integrated scanning skills
Processing discontinued information
Non-linear approaches
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Homo Zappiens at Work
Phoning to his friend
Listening his favorite music
Doing his home-work
Surfing the Net
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Homo Zappiens at Work
Multi-tasking
Integrated scanning skills
Processing discontinued information
Non-linear approaches
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Processing discontinued information
Zapping TV channels is constructing interrupted
visual, audio and textual information chunks into
meaningful knowledge
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Homo Zappiens at Work
Multi-tasking
Integrated scanning skills
Processing discontinued information
Non-linear approaches
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Non-linear approaches
Non linear approaches require a redesign of
content according to new insights of learning and
using multimedia technologies
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Do the Homo Zappiens skills relate to learning?
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About Learning

• We learn by reflecting on our experiences
  creating mental maps and models
• Learning is the process of adapting our mental
  models by including new experiences.

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Basics of Constructivism

• Learning is searching for meaning
• Constructing meaningful knowledge demands
  understanding of the whole and its constituant
  parts
• The aim of learning is constructing your own
  meaningful knowledge

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Brain based Learning

• Human brains are neural networks acting as
  complex systems (adaptive, non-linear, and
  self-organizing)
• Learning is a non linear process of adaptivity of
  the system using associative and creative
  thinking

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Brain based Learning

• Learning is enhanced by
• confronting learners with complex, interactive
  experiences, high level content within an
  authentic context, and fitting the learners
  interests or needs
• a challenging content and learning activities
• Activating learning methods foster
  internalization of information

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Summarizing...

• Learning is an active mental process of the
  learner
• reflection with the inner self, and through
  communication with others
• transforming information into meaningful
  knowledge
• Teaching is enabling students to be active,
  communicating, thus constructing knowledge

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First Conclusion

• Homo Zappiens prepares for future
• Education is underestimating the Homo Zappiens
• Education does not recognise the screenagers
  learning skills
• Education will have to adopt entirely new
  learning approaches

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Second Conclusion

• .The skills that screenagers develop while
  scanning computer screens, zapping the TV
  channels, multitasking, cross reading texts,
  and thus rapidly processing huge amounts of
  information, will guarantee the survival of our
  civilization in the 21st century.

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New Approaches for Teaching

• Flexibility of content
• Flexibility of learning models
• Flexibility in time/scheduling
• Flexibility of goals and assessment
• Flexibility of the learning community

Preparing for a creative society instead of an
industrial society
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Flexible Content

• Defining new core content
• OECDs study on what pupils should know for
  future
• Using any resources available from everywhere
• Good bye to the linear traditional textbooks
• Using the communication facilities for asking,
  finding out and discuss
• Hello mobile devices for new learning services

Ministries to provide guidelines in stead of
detailed curricula
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Flexibility of Learning Models
Teacher led
Community led
Learner led
Teachers to become side-by-side learners,
facilitators, and the guide on the side
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Flexibility in Time/Scheduling

• 7 lessons a day
• each lesson is 50 minutes
• each week is the same
• 40 weeks a year

• Less whole classroom teaching
• Subject oriented timeslots
• Varying periods for individual and group working

Schools to become autonomous institutions
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Flexibility of Assessment

• Students own their learning process
• Schools may define competencies
• Students can take responsibility
• formulating and checking their own learning goals
• Students can prove their competencies
• by submitting (multi media) materials showing
  their competencies e.g. in electronic portfolios

Secondary students to learn and work from 16
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Flexibility of Learning Communities

• Opening up schools
• e.g. Tescos 2000 Network Learning Communities
  learning with parents, external experts,
  governmental authorities the extended learning
  community
• Schools will loose their primacy of educational
  services

Schools, multimedia companies, TV broadcasters,
and other private companies to establish Public
Private Partnerships for Learning
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