Childrenin

Cyberspace

Intellectual Development

•Piaget (physical and sensory perception)•Children below seven yrs old•Internet (now as source of information) in favor of other physical activities (hrs in screen/lego blocks); miss out on other important developmental tasks

Intellectual development…

• John Dewey (2000) – imp of physical involvement in the intellectual process; separation of mind and body in schools; reaction to trad. classrm; thinking (accurate & deliberate connections/implications); lacks practical meaning; active doing – passive undergoing destroys meaning of experience.

• Internet – relevance & active exploration if used properly (memorizing parts of human body; physics of trajectory)

Intellectual development…

• As it stands now, internet/digital media – passive sensory stimulation (unless mouse…); trial & error (sequential order – analytical thinking); helpful to children w/attention problems; detrimental to others if replaces trad methods (decoding written text) ‘coz fosters poor analytical ability, ultimately stunts cognitive dev by favoring concrete over the abstract.

Digital learning

• Children endowed w/ curiosity, self-starters (e.g. music)

• Internet at its best is an educ tool that serves as amplifier of students abilities and interests

• But use of Net requires a focused mind; can lead to diffused and inchoate learning…leads to meaninglessness

Digital learning…

• Multitasking nature of Net – add risks to scholarship and learning (writing, instant mssging, games on the side)

• “Much of today’s technology fragments children’s experience instead of integrating it and distracts their minds from the job of sense-making.” (Healy, 1998)

• impact on brain development (frontal lobe executive functioning)

Digital learning…

• Audiovisual learning aids in the classroom (precursor of Net) – mixed effects

• Book learning (linear, integrated delivery); visual images (separate packets, loosely tied together, & arranged in sequences moved by the visuals rather than by the text

• educ organized around slow-moving printed word vis-à-vis speed of lightning electronic image

Digital learning…

• Image based educ- shortened attention span among children

• Tv’s contribution to educ psych (teaching/entertainment –Postman)

• “The worst sin today is to be boring…I’m tired of these children expecting to be entertained-they don’t have the patience of a flea” (Healy 1998)

Digital learning…

• Tv/digital media – short attention span; internet exacerbates problem( Web – short easily digestible, graphically enhanced packets); rise in ADD in recent years; difficulty to assimilate info unless in short digestible packets

• “ Media-blunted brains” as a factor (Healy, 1998); MTV videos; teen viewers habituated to attending best to highly charged inputs (rarely seen in classroom)

Digital learning…

• Educators accommodate universal shortened attention span – jazzed-up materials (vcr, internet, other multimedia offerings); may increase problem ( in college; take away the fun; incapable to assimilate body of coherent complex material)

Digital learning…

• Computer games/activities in the internet (freq. resolutions & outcomes are not open ended…unlike life {think up of an innovative solution} thus stunts creativity – children learn there is only one solution and their task is to find it rather than invent it.

Digital learning…

• Does not promote problem-solving skills (click on the spot; trial and error instead of analytical process)

• Others say (hand-eye coordination; future job market); Hewlett Packard spokes person: ”the co rarely hires people who are predominantly computer experts, favoring instead those who have a talent for teamwork and are flexible and innovative.” (Todd Oppenheimer, 1997)

Digital learning…

• Best way: exercise children’s intellect by engaging them in real world (e.g. nailing two boards together; vis-à-vis learning a program – 2 wks)

Digital scholarship

• Haven for serious students; educational hazard for less motivated students (get by w/ shallow work);

• Cyber-sloth (anachronistic institute; senior student who has not activated his library card) “you can’t find it in the net….”

Digital scholarship…

• Cheating as an immediate educational hazard; it has never been so easy.

• One student: “If your friends plagiarize and get to have fun while you are in your room trying to type your paper the right way you begin to feel like a fool” (personal communication, September 2000).

Information Glut

• Information age; assess full impact? Changed the way education is delivered and assimilated.

• Middle school principal: “The critical piece here is that there is so much info out there, that there is no way that we can teach info the way we used to teach it. We used to have a curriculum and it had a content in it.

Information glut…

• Now content changes everyday, and there is more and more content. What we are finding is that we need to be selective about the content we want children to know and more in-tune w/ helping children understand where they can find content, how they can use it, and how they can determine what’s appropriate, reliable, and truthful. (pers intrvw, Sept 2000).

Information glut…

• Mastering databases; internet redeeming educational value. : If our children is to stay afloat in the information sea, they must become accomplished users of high-level cognitive strategies. They must learn to take massive amounts of data and info and convert the into something meaningful and useful.” (Healy, 1998)

Learning Style

• Curiosity – engine of learning; voracious appetite to learn new things;

• Net can be useful to tailor an educational program to a child’s needs.

• Learning styles are as varied as people – visual-spatial learners (blocks, puzzles, engr problems); high verbal capacities (do well in trad school settings); social learners; introverts w/creativity located w/in themselves not in groups

Learning style

• Traditional learning (capacity to sit still for long periods & assimilate mats through engaging written texts).

• Imagination, linear thinking, & commitment of time – classical characteristics of successful learning

• Net - for those w/ other learning style; offers visual stimulation to the visually inclined and audial stimulation to the audibly inclined; allow those to work well in teams to be in contact w/ teammates.

Learning Disabilities

• An impt learning motivator is history of success; for children w/ADD or LD it may be too late since much damage has been done to their self-image ( often come w/ long history of school underfunctioning) as competent learners

• They know they are as smart as their peers but they can’t attend, are often disruptive, and lean toward giving up school.

Learning disabilities…

• Net (multi-stimulatory environment) can help youngsters who have difficulty in trad settings become more productive & successful.

• ADD (inattentiveness, restlessness, and impulsivity); sitting for hours, pages staring back at them – antsy and helpless.

Learning disability…

• Blurred world of: image, movement, knowledge, and verbal interaction w/ friends provides a heightened stimulus that may help or harm focus learning.

• Often learn better from visual cues and kinesthetic experiences of handling the mouse and the keyboard.