Literacy isn't enough: Digital Fluency in the Age of InfoWhelm

Presenter: Ian Jukes

 

www.ianjukes.com

 

• Screenagers are our new kids.
• When they see an image, they expect to be able to move it
• They grow up with a mouse in their hands.
• They mature 3 years earlier.
• Digital natives have developed a new brain
• They speak the language, a new one
• We speak Digital as a Second Language (DSL)

 

Brains are nerologically wired differently than we are.

• Hypertexted brains

 

50% of our brain wiring happens after birth

 

New scanning technologies show that the brain is highly maluable. Supply of brain cells are constantly being replaced.

 

You can change your capacity. Neuroplasticity. Creates new thinking patterns throughout our lives. Must have specific factors present.

• progressive change
• stimulated association
• watching TV reprograms the brain must take several hrs. per day 7 days a week

 

Game playing has changed our brains

• MMORPG (newest wave) of interactive on-line gaming
• this is digital bombardment

 

The brain is like a tree: it's pruned: use it or loose it.

 

Neural Connections form during early childhood.

Myelin sheet coats the connectors.

It allows more information capacity and makes it faster.

If the connections are useful they are pruned away

Regular exposure of even youngest children of digital bombardment enhances visual memory and processing.

 

Human Brain Project Neuroinformatics

FMRIs Functional Movement RIs

 

Scientific American Mind

"The Teen Brain"

Shows FMRI scans that actually look different for different generations.

Kids use different sections

Visual Cortex develops more fully for kids.

90% recall for digital natives if asked to identify photos

60% my generation

10% of older generation

 

3M Study

60,000 x faster eyes process visual information

 

Visual 30%

touch   8%

hearing 3%

 

The Brain Rules is a new book about retention.

 

Our eyes find the "Golden Mean" in a z curve. Digital Natives don't do it that way. Typically ignore the bottom right side of the page

 

Specific colors repell digital natives.Blood Red, pink, neon pink, burnt orange

 

Eyes start at bottom and move up, go to the sides and then look at the middle.

 

Eric Jenson, author, kids think graphically. Either visual or visual kinesetic learners.

 

Mark Prinski says, 10,000 hrs. by age of 10 years old

 

<4000 hrs. reading

<9000 hrs. in school

 

Accellerated gap between brains of teens and younger children.

 

Shape school to kids, not kids to schools!!

 

If we continue to do what we've always done, we will make no progress.

 

Our kids aren't diasabled, they're other abled.

 

In America, 30% kids grade 8 don't graduate

 

Tomorrow will give 7 strategies to use natives digital learning style.

 

Understnding Digital Kids 83 pages long

 

The committed Sardine's Reading List contains his readings.

 

The Committed Sardine blog

iajukes@mac.com "I need to be committed" as subject line, and Ian will give you permission

 

Staff development is a waste of time. WE MUST DO SOMETHING!