Response to Thing 1

As I watched the video, lots of questions suggested themselves to me. I wondered about some of the assumptions and assertions behind the video.
1) The video asserts that students need intensely rich digital educational experiences because students are mostly digital learners, despite the reference to the Gardner modalities of learning. To support this assertion, the video authors referenced the 10,000 hours college students will have devoted to video games (learning what I wondered?); the 10,000 hours talking on cell phones (conversations with friends are now "educational"?); and 20,000 hours watching TV (and I thought about the wasteland that is television today). So of these 40,000 hours college students have amassed in their lives with digital technology, how many of them really qualify as valid "educational experiences"?
2) Additionally we are told that children and teens devote 2.75 hours / week using home computers. (And I wondered, to do what?) As I look at boarding students, I see many of them playing rather violet video games, for hours at a time. Do those hours qualify as "educational"?
3) We are told that 70% of 4-6 year olds have used a computer. So? Used it how? In what educational endeavor? I want more detail in this research? Does anyone else?
4) On any given day, 68% of children under 2 will use "screen media" for an average of just over 2 hours (2:05), and I couldn't help but recall conversations I've overheard by parents who admit that they turn on the television as a kind of pacifier / babysitter. That's a selling point or representation of the "rich" digital experiences our students have?
5) To support the idea that digital experiences provide a "richness" that our students crave and deserve, the video quotes Bill Gates on the "richness" provided by Microsoft products. Was anyone else saying "Right!"? Then we're asked to consider "How much 'richness' does our curriculum provide?" Right? I provide "richness" by asking my students to read great literature, use their imaginations to picture scenes, think about how characters interact, offer interpretations and debate these with their classmates, and then work to articulate their ideas both in discussion and in papers (and sometimes in presentations using a variety of digital tools), but to assert that I'm not providing "richness" in the curriculum unless my students are using cell phones and iPods is simply absurd.
6) Do my students "Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create? YES! And they've been doing this successfully for the last 30 years I've been teaching. Amazing...
7) We're shown a quote by some high school student from wherever: "When I go to school I have to 'power down.'" And the implication seems to be that unless we're having our students "power up" with the latest gadget, we're losing our students. Yet my students have just been discussing THE GREAT GATSBY with genuine interest and "engagement" after reading the book (of all things).
8) We are told that one researcher "claims" that on average students in class "only get to ask a question once every 10 hours!" Did anyone else wonder why the folks who presented this video to us had to go back to 1994 for this information? Did "claim" worry anyone else?
9) Then we're informed that 2.7 billion searches occur on Google every month. So? Googling something is one of the more mindless ways to conduct research. Have you watched students "google"? How frequently do they stop to read what Google finds for them? Wouldn't that be a more interesting question? What would the answer to that question reveal about students' use of "Google"? When I assign research projects, I ask my students to use online scholarly data bases such as JSTOR and Infotrac. Google Scholar is a minimal expectation.
10) To engage our students more effectively and teach more effectively, we're told that we need to use digital technology and to support this we're told that our students have sent and received 200,000 emails or instant messages by the time they graduate from college. Then we're admonished for accusing them of not reading, not writing. But 200,000 written messages must be a lot of the 3 R's = Rigor, Relevance and Relationships. OK - "Relationships" seems an appropriate conclusion - but rigor? relevance? RIGOR? Most of the email messages I've received from well-educated adults cannot be described as "rigorous" or "relevant" to anything beyond the immediate topic of the email - which can be "Shall we do lunch?"
11) We're asked "What aren't you using cellphone technology to teach?" and told text messaging can be used for all kinds of assessments and educational tasks. And then we're asked to "Imagine" giving our classes an assignment that asks them to get a text message in 10 minutes from anyone outside of the school identifying 1) breakfast 2) the weather and 3) the last item purchased. "Bonus points for messages received from other countries using languages other than English." "Talk about acquiring data!" If this is what we think of when we think of teaching skills and developing scholarly discourse, I think we've set the bar too low by a lot!
12) And finally we're told our students wouldn't "hate school if they could use their iPods in class!" After all, there are nearly 90,000,000 iPods out there. And the formula for successful teaching? "iPod + Podcast = Anytime learning" where the assumption seems to be that as long as a student is being entertained, s/he is learning. Really? Apple's iTunes Music Store (the source for the information on this page) assures us there are 1000s of Podcasts available on virtually every topic. The last time I looked, my students weren't "hating school." I know I'm privileged to work in an environment where students will actually engage a topic without any digital "accessories." I'm probably the last teacher on the face of the earth to think this way. But it still seems to be true in my classrooms, where we read novels, poetry, plays, essays, and short stories, and students come to class to discuss them and then write about them. And that doesn't seem to need "blogs, GPS, Wikis, websites [well, I do use websites to give them supplementary "enrichment" info.] cellphones, podcasts," and other "technology to teach." Nothing in this video persuades me that I should change the way I teach. I know propaganda when I see it. I can still think critically about what I'm asked to read and look at. I wonder if those people who made this video have any answers other than "everyone else is doing it."
Incidentally, I am aware of no research that shows that any of the technological advances of the last two decades has improved the educational level of our students at all. In fact, the "digital" age has simply become so entertaining as a distraction, that students read less, think less deeply about things. I am also of the opinion that had schools invested in more teachers over the last 20 years and reduced class sizes by a third or more, we wouldn't be seeing the overall decline in education so evident lately. There is research that shows that the single most effective way to improve the education of students is to reduce the number of students / class, regardless of the "digital richness" of the technology use. Imagine that.