Of Morse code and smart phones

Last year I took part in a round-table at a conference for post-secondary educators. The three round-table speakers were discussing their experiences with college programs that required students to have a laptop. Participation from the audience was highly encouraged and solicited. The round-table participants themselves all supported laptops in the classroom, but to different extents and in different ways. I was surprised at the number of audience members that were either against laptops, or against laptops except for specific purposes/lessons. For me a laptop is an expensive pen and paper + SO MUCH MORE. Like pen and paper you can use a laptop in a very specific manner (create a presentation for example) but also in very generic ways that can't be defined ahead of time. Add wireless connections and now you have the entire school library at your fingertips and far larger resources from outside your school.

Common comments were often along the line of "... but do they have to have it on all the time ..." and "... but it is such a distraction!" I expanded the scope to include other devices (smartphones, etc.) and you should have seen the resistance. A much more recent conversation helped me understand where some of these people are coming from, when I heard the comment "... but he isn't serious ..." about a blog posting looking for advice from netizens. Some people don't realize that the Internet and the uses put to it are how the current generations live. It is comparable to electricity to the previous couple of generations. Just as my parents (likely) couldn't have imagined life without electricity, many from the current generation consider instant communication and (re)search capabilities as givens. Asking them to disconnect during class probably feels like asking someone 20 years ago (when I was in school) to put away their pen and pencil, and get out their slate and chalk. A recent study puts this in perspective, but is probably not understood by those older generations. When asked, a huge majority of German 20-somethings said they would rather give up their car or their spouse than their connection to the web. 97% couldn't imagine giving up their mobile phone.

I challenge educators to find ways that their classrooms can adopt these sort of tools. This will be hard and uncomfortable for many educators as it means encouraging the students to interact outside of the classroom - and may make the educator feel ignored. However, without finding a way to include these devices in the classroom I say the students will use them anyway, but for other purposes - ones not necessarily congruent with the lesson.

And all of us from the previous generations need to start understanding and communicating with the current (young adult) and next generations in a manner they understand. Otherwise it feels to them the same way it might feel to us if someone tried to communicate with us using morse code.