RIck Stiles-Oldring's List: Defining a 21stC Learner

After your DNA, the number one variable determining what your brain is like
is how you spend your time when you're young. If you spend 24 hours a week
watching television as the baby boomers did, you get a certain kind of brain. If
you spend an equivalent amount of time being the active handler of information,
the user, the initiator, the reading, collaborating, composing your thoughts and
having to remember things, scrutinizing, searching even with video games,
developing strategies, then this affects your brain as well. Overall this is a
good thing. It's equipping an entire generation with the thought processes and
information handling capabilities that will be appropriate for the 21st
century.

You say the Net Generation is perceived as being dumber than the
previous generation, addicted to the Net, they steal, they're violent, have no
shame, are narcissistic and don't give a damn. What's driving these
perceptions?

Plato basically had the same criticism of young people as
they do today – that they're lazy, don't give a damn, they're rude and don't pay
attention to their parents and so on. You combine that with something new – that
this is the first time in human history that young people are the authorities on
something, on a fundamental change in society. I was an authority on model
trains when I was 11. Today, the 11-year-old at the breakfast table is an
authority on a digital revolution that's changing business, commerce,
government, democracy, entertainment, publishing, science – every institution in
society. This is a formula for fear and we fear what we don't understand. And
fear gets in the way of doing the right thing. The students know more than the
teachers about the most important innovation in learning, arguably ever. The new
employees have at their fingertips more powerful tools than what exists in
Canada's most sophisticated corporations. And what do we do? We ban them. We ban
tools like Facebook at work. In all of our institutions, this fear causes us to
do the opposite of what we should be doing. Which is one of the reasons why I
wrote the book.

The Reality of The Numbers

In K-12, however, on average, there is a large gap in the amount of computers
per student in most classrooms.  Most K-12 districts do not have use for
any learning management system (LMS) to connect students outside the
classroom.  Technology is being encouraged, but not necessarily being
resourced.  With the larger gap in the computer to student ratio, there is
a smaller gap for students who have mobile phones.

Students are learning using multiple platforms.  They use their phones
now more for text and productivity than they do for actual phone calling. 
A mobile phone has become tool.  Education is catching up to this
idea.  Most school districts as well as higher education institutions have
what is commonly called an “Acceptable Use Policy” for technology.  This is
a contract for students and faculty to abide by to keep technology use fair and
safe.  The majority of school districts have a ban on mobile phones because
of the potential distraction they present.  Some more progressive districts
are moving toward a “Responsible Use Policy”, where teachers use tools students
use and teach them how to use them responsibly. What this means is teachers will
need to adopt new teaching strategies which leverage these newer
technologies.  Instead of  wasting their energy “fighting their
preferred delivery system”, teachers should be “working to ensure that (our)
students extract maximum understanding and benefit from the vast amounts of
cell-phone-based learning of which they will, no doubt, soon take advantage”
(Prensky, 2008).